Italian for Beginners
Buena Vista Home Entertainment (BVHE) | Release Date: January 18, 2002 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
77
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 28 Critic Reviews
Positive:
24
Mixed:
3
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleCarla Meyer
Lone Scherfig, the writer-director, has made a film so unabashedly hopeful that it actually makes the heart soar. Yes, soar. Read full review
90
NewsweekDavid Ansen
Scherfig and her wonderful cast slyly transmute the quotidian into the magical. It’s like watching flowers bloom in a concrete garden.
90
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
This is a woman's work in the best sense -- empathetic, inferentially erotic and delicately intuitive, as well as fiercely intelligent.
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
A delicious and delicately funny look at the residents of a Copenhagen neighborhood coping with the befuddling complications life tosses at them. Read full review
90
TimeRichard Schickel
The sober wit of this comedy arises not from conventional artifice -- snappy dialogue, wacky situations -- but from a realistically drawn ensemble interacting truthfully with one another.
88
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
Italian for Beginners, on its own small scale, is a one-of-a-kind movie: a baggy-pants spiritual comedy.
88
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
This is a movie that doesn't depend for its effects on star performers or stylized wish-fulfillment sexuality but on realism, sharp observation and honest humor. Read full review
88
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
It's the rare film, Dogma or otherwise, that keeps you smiling long after the lights come up.
88
Boston GlobeJay Carr
It's the kind of romantic comedy that doesn't cheapen the word ''heartwarming.'' Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Don Irvine
Unlike Hollywood's starting point of hopelessly beautiful and yet inexplicably unentangled principal characters, Italian For Beginners'raw material is something of a more dirty-fingernail variety. Read full review
80
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
A funny, relationship-driven ensemble piece that takes the chill out of the Danish winter with a snuggly blanket of humanism. Read full review
80
Washington PostDesson Thomson
As they stumble, bumble and fumble their way to love, they get more charming by the minute. Which makes them more interesting than Hollywood-style characters, anyway. Read full review
80
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
It's all done without special effects, soaring strings or manufactured sentiment. Now, that's entertainment. Read full review
80
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
With its ludicrous parallels and brisk, funny script (pardon my provincialism, but it sounds all the funnier in Danish), Italian for Beginners is full of larky charm while drawing its emotional vitality from urban loneliness. Read full review
80
Rolling StonePeter Travers
These melancholy Danes create something sweetly sexy, funny and touching. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
Has a generosity of spirit and a wonderfully upbeat ending that makes it a nice little antidote to a bleak season. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The film only wants to amuse. It's a reminder that Dogma films need not involve pathetic characters tormented by the misuse of their genitalia, but can simply want to have a little fun. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
An engaging romantic comedy that would have been better if the audience wasn't constantly being distracted by mediocre video quality and jerky camera movements. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia Puig
This charming but slight tale has warmth, wit and interesting characters compassionately portrayed. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
Dogme films don't have to be bleak to be effective. They can be -- imagine! -- fun. Scherfig may have taken the discipline in an entirely new and welcome direction. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Its low-key charm shows that Dogma filmmakers have yet to run out of ideas. Read full review
70
VarietyEddie Cockrell
The most nonconfrontational and thus accessible title in the Dogma lot to date, and will speak the international language of proletariat love to arthouse auds who go for such fare. Read full review
70
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Sweet-natured and likable to a fault, the film studiously avoids confronting the darker themes of death and religion that bubble up from its story, no matter how central they are to the characters' lives. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
Will be of interest for anyone seeking unconventional romantic stories as well as those curious about the development of the Dogme movement. Read full review
50
The New York TimesStephen Holden
Despite its hip, off-center style and pointed de-glamorization of its singles, the movie adds up to little more than feel-good fluff. Read full review
50
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
To see this much austere vérité atmosphere propping up this much schlock romanticism is like biting into a blue-cheese canapé that turns out to be a fluffernutter. Read full review
50
Seattle Post-IntelligencerPaula Nechak
While the film shuns the glamour or glitz that an American movie might demand, Scherfig tosses us a romantic scenario that is just as simplistic as a Hollywood production. Read full review
30
TV Guide MagazineSteve Simels
None of this is any more fun as it sounds -- the cancer ward scenes are truly disturbing -- but to be fair, writer/director Lone Scherfeg (the first woman to make a Dogme 95 film) manages some black-humored laughs. Read full review
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