The Mystic Masseur

This delicious fable reflects Merchant's great love of language, his delicate visual sense, and his ability to make you think and laugh out loud, often at the very same time. Read full review

Thanks to the clever, caring touch of director Ismail Merchant, working from a script by Caryl Phillips, this steadily engrossing film captures the book's bracing humor and humanity. Read full review

Merchant's attention to Trinidadian culture, locales and general atmosphere is inescapably alluring. Read full review

The result is an eccentric, amusing fable that moves at an unhurried island pace, a picturesque tale that Merchant seems to have invested with an almost personal sense of spirit. Read full review

A subtle, humorous, illuminating study of politics, power and social mobility. Read full review

A soft-focused, wistful big-screen art film. Read full review

A wry, nonjudgmental look at the blind faith and materialistic ambitions permeating the superstitious Indian subculture, though the tone becomes more caustic as the hypocrisy and corruption of colonial politics strip Ganesh of his moral authority. The cast is uniformly excellent. Read full review

A wry, affectionate delight, a human comedy about a man who thinks he has had greatness thrust upon him when in fact he has merely thrust himself in the general direction of greatness. Read full review

A warm-hearted gem of a film based on the V.S. Naipaul novel of the same name. Read full review

The film is being sold as a comedy, and it is amusing. Secretly, though, it's a romance, with Merchant's roving camera discerning the tempestuous love triangle at the heart of Naipaul's novel.

Succeeds as light entertainment -- even if at the cost of the material's greater potential. Read full review

There is a very sharp, funny critique of ambition and self-made gurus in The Mystic Masseur, but it is obscured by a softening bloat.

At its best, The Mystic Masseur is like a tall tale that grows more beguiling and credible the taller it gets.

It's only because the performances are so vividly entertaining -- Mandvi and Puri are particularly good -- and the painstakingly reconstructed locations so lovely that the saggier sequences are tolerable. Read full review

A mildly enjoyable if toothless adaptation of a much better book. Read full review

Though difficult to understand at times, the language -- a combination of local patois and the characters' particular Indian accent -- is as lush as the cinematography. Read full review

A small story, with fewer lofty ambitions than its lead character, the film runs out of steam at a certain point. Overall, its leisurely pace and lack of overt action will bore some filmgoers, while the movie's final section, during which Ganesh pursues his political aspirations, feels strangely hurried and less satisfying than the rest of the story.

It's a sinuous, bittersweet odyssey, and although the filmmaking lacks finesse, the actors, especially Mandvi, with his bright, sorrowful beauty, and the great Om Puri, who plays Ganesh's father-in-law with an infernal crankiness, are always worth watching. Read full review

A haunting allegory about the rise and fall of a figure who possesses powerful charisma, if weak karma. Read full review

Offers no tangible sense of Ganesh's genuine convictions (beyond a thirst for fame), nor of the essence of his character. By the time Ganesh's political downfall comes, in the same spiritless fashion in which his fortunes rose, it would take a mystic miracle to care. Read full review

Occasionally funny, sometimes inspiring, often boring, the magic is minimal in The Mystic Masseur. Read full review

Overall, it's a curiously lifeless affair. Read full review

The pace is slow and the story neither takes off nor arrives anywhere. Read full review

The novel is a sharp, Dickensian comedy; the film is just plain dull. Read full review

The Mystic Masseur shows more signs of life than "Cotton Mary," but it's still a producer's movie: attractively mounted, dramatically inert. Read full review

Ismail Merchant's screen adaptation retains much of the novel's incident, but fumbles both the humor and moral ambivalence. Read full review