A Very Long Engagement
Warner Independent Pictures (WIP) | Release Date: November 26, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
76
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 39 Critic Reviews
Positive:
31
Mixed:
8
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Rapturously beautiful, startlingly audacious and often very funny, the film employs many of the techniques that were used so pleasingly in "Amélie."
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
It's a magical film which manages to transport and rivet us in the same highly-imaginitive, breezily playful way "Amelie" did. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleRuthe Stein
Hauntingly tells a story older than the Odyssey and as timely as today's body count from Iraq. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Unfolds amid the mechanized carnage of World War I. Yet everything in it is personal. That's why it's a masterpiece. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
This is a movie that considers graphic violence with a refined taste for the sensuous: Guts spill, blood spurts, corpses stink, but there is a handsome, absurdist humanity to the way Jeunet (who wrote the script with Guillaume Laurant) maps out the crossroads of human carnage and human caring. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
A unique and masterful film, filled with surprises and felicities and moments of transporting visual power. Read full review
90
TimeRichard Corliss
Can a movie have too much good stuff? Not when it's stuffed like this one. Read full review
90
VarietyLisa Nesselson
Told with a blend of visual mastery and emotional intimacy, ambitious venture sustains a special melding of romance and pragmatism that should engage discerning audiences. Read full review
90
SalonCharles Taylor
The holiday season's best movie so far. Read full review
90
Washington PostStephen Hunter
In its insistence on the centrality of the war to the collective consciousness of mankind, it's of a piece with "The English Patient," rather than "Saving Private Ryan." Read full review
90
Film ThreatMichael Ferraro
The film is near perfect in its attempt to properly mix the irrationality of war in with an interesting love story. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Ken Tucker
When this long movie is over, all you want to do is clap and weep and watch it all over again immediately. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
An emotional powerhouse. Read full review
88
PremiereGlenn Kenny
An epic treatment of epic themes that doesn't soft-soap its audience, but at the same time provides a terrifically satisfying entertainment. Read full review
88
USA TodayMike Clark
A long movie that almost wears out its 21/4-hour welcome, yet it's full of surprises. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Flattens you with concussive detail and the awfulness of war; it plays like "Saving Private Ryan" as remade by a Continental mathematician flipping out on Ecstasy. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Jeunet brings everything together -- his joyously poetic style, the lovable Tautou, a good story worth the telling -- into a film that is a series of pleasures stumbling over one another in their haste to delight us. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterBernard Besserglik
Jeunet provides numerous pleasures, particularly visual, along the way. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesCarina Chocano
A resolutely odd, occasionally absurd movie, but it's as charming and stylish as one could expect from this pair - if you like that sort of thing. Read full review
80
SlateDavid Edelstein
The downside to all this stylishness: that A Very Long Engagement is Amélie Goes to War. Read full review
80
EmpireIan Nathan
Inventive and lyrical, A Very Long Engagement is a joyous contradiction in terms: a war-torn romantic comedy. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Starts slowly, but builds to a satisfying conclusion. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Longer than necessary, that is, for the story it has to tell. This flaw aside, the drama is well crafted and sometimes touching, with especially forceful opening scenes. Read full review
75
New York Daily NewsJack Mathews
There are many ways to say that war is hell, but few filmmakers have said it with as much imagination, humor, intrigue and humanity as Jean-Pierre Jeunet in A Very Long Engagement. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
It's an odd, initially jarring mixture of style and subject matter that works better as the film goes along. Read full review
75
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
The movie works amazingly well as a historical epic. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Certainly long and not always engaging and comes with a predictably basic ending, yet there are unexpected pleasures, moments of beauty and tiny pockets of joy to sustain you through the journey. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
A Very Long Engagement is "Cold Mountain" with French people. Read full review
70
TV Guide MagazineKen Fox
The film is a trifle long too long for its rather slim mystery, but in face of so much beauty and invention that's a small quibble. Read full review
70
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
Mathilde's story is well enough handled by Jeunet to be endurable, and the rest of the film is a reward. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
It's just exhausting. For all of the movie's sumptuous, eyepopping craft, you'll feel more than a little relief when Mathilde finally reaches the end of her quest. Read full review
60
Village VoiceJessica Winter
Boldly aspirational. It's Jeunet's stab at "Paths of Glory," dipped in a sepia bath and halfway wrenched into a women's picture. Read full review
60
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
For all of Audrey Tautou's considerable charm in the title role, Jeunet's need for a well-ordered universe proved as suffocating and exhausting as being trapped on an amusement-park ride. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
Only when Jodie Foster materializes midstory, delivering a beautiful, pocket-size performance as the mistress of one of the condemned men, does the film spring to life. Read full review
60
Washington PostDesson Thomson
Engagement simply disappears inside its own enormous, intricate and ambitious design. Read full review
60
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Sacrifices compelling drama for gratuitous whimsy and big-budget spectacle. Read full review
50
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
Shuttles between schoolboy humor, calculated savagery and, at the end, a rank sentimentalism in which love all too easily conquers all. Read full review
50
Dallas ObserverMelissa Levine
The result is nothing but allusive and memorial. And boring. This film is boring, at least partly because it is trying desperately to be big. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleKimberley Jones
The elements are all here for something spectacular – and in brilliant bursts, Jeunet really gets it – but in the end, all that potential is sunk by a terminally confused tone and milquetoast pairing of lovers. Pity that. Read full review
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