| Cinecom Pictures | Release Date: October 30, 1987 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
9
Mixed:
5
Negative:
1
|
Critic Reviews
Mr. Frears and Mr. Kureishi have composed Sammy and Rosie as if they were building a giant bonfire in a mock celebration of the achievements of contemporary British society and, by extension, of the civilized world. They throw everything on -love, death, sex, politics, violence. A lot of stuff doesn't easily burn, but there's also plenty that does.
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Sammy and Rosie has a fierce, scrambled intelligence. In this story about a group of interlocking characters in a London neighborhood on the fringe, Kureishi and Frears rack up all of their views on sex, politics, colonialism, social injustice and rebellion like balls in a game of pool, then send them flying. And they seem less interested in pocketing shots than in watching the balls ricochet and collide.
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The film's triumphantly perverse climax, in fact, is just that: a three-tiered split-screen of three couples shagging that resembles nothing so much as a national flag and is set to a rendition of "My Girl" sung by a black trio dressed as colonial soldiers. When it hits such giddily subversive high notes, Sammy and Rosie ... transcends provocation and bursts into ecstatic revelation.
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Made in a documentary manner as styled as a Hollywood musical, the movie is hyperconscious of art, of politics, of itself, and at times it's exasperatingly affectless.
Sammy and Rosie is a writer's film, with all the pluses and minuses
that go with that status. The language is marvelously clear and the structure
exquisitely wrought; on the other hand, the film lacks the sense of discovery
and spontaneity a more creative director might have brought to it.
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Ambitious, unsettling, funny and perhaps too smart for its own good. With so much on its satirical agenda, it tends to spin out of orbit. [9 Nov 1987]
Sammy and Rosie is not only the best British film of the year, it's one of the best films of the year from any country, period, a raucously erotic dirge belted into the gaping mouth of a tomb. [30 Oct 1987]
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