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Comment
10/18/08
O Jerusalem (2007)
30
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:20
Fresh:6
Rotten:14
Average Rating:4.6/10
Consensus: Though a noble effort, O Jerusalem fails to combine this history lesson and human drama into a coherent cinematic piece.
Synopsis: In 1947, two friends--one Jew and one Arab--find their friendship tested as the state of Israel is being formed. O JERUSALEM is adapted from the book written by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre.
Starring: Said Taghmaoui, JJ Feild, Maria Papas, Patrick Bruel
Director: Elie Chouraqui
Reviews for O Jerusalem
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04/03/08
O Jerusalem is as overstated and expository as a historical pageant, from the drippy music to a sputtering, running gag involving funky old jalopies to clichéd speeches and teary-eyed deaths and a final voice-over crying out for peace.
12/07/07
Good intentions often make bad movies.
11/21/07
Top CriticThe filmmakers split time between history and personal drama in ways that do full service to neither.
11/15/07
Its heart firmly in the right place, O Jerusalem proves an uneasy mix of history and fiction.
11/15/07
I felt as though I could have gathered the same information about Israel's beginnings from a pamphlet, and saved myself the film's forthright baggage
10/28/07
A hopeful and helpful movie that depicts the friendship between a Jew and an Arab that outlasts the winds of war and the culture of revenge and racial hatred surrounding them.
10/28/07
In trying to be sensitive to such a controversial issue, O Jerusalem glazes over important events settling for mediocrity while giving a history lesson more appropriate for high school.
10/26/07
It aspires to be an epic drama but suffers from an acute identity crisis: It can't decide if it wants to be history, drama, or a cry for peace in the Mideast.
10/26/07
The need to touch on pivotal events makes this at times seem like history's 'greatest hits,' although the personal stories provide a narrative thread tying it all together.
10/26/07
It's hard to take the film seriously with [its] contrivances, including a hokey music score, dialogue designed solely to give us historical information.
10/25/07
Top CriticDirector Elie Chouraqui and co-writer Didier Lepecheur [fall] prey to a fatal evenhandedness that reduces a complex battle for the loveliest, most fought-over city in the world to a pile of heroic clichés.
10/25/07
Even with its flaws, the film finds many moving moments as it surveys the ravages of a perpetually divided country.
10/24/07
As a history lesson, the film is so elementary and silly that you'd half-expect to find Mr. Peabody and Sherman peeking around the Wailing Wall.
10/24/07
Such fictionalizations are the stuff of TV miniseries, and only serve to add confusion and melodrama to a history that, as Collins and Lapierre's book proves, hardly needs further dramatization.
10/19/07
Unfortunately, French director Elie Chouraqui settles for speed and cliché.
10/19/07
Hammers away at its Arab/Jewish variation on the chicken-or-the-egg debate ad nauseam.
10/17/07
It's not easy to turn one of the most controversial events of the 20th century into a movie that makes your eyes roll, but O Jerusalem does this and worse.
10/17/07
Top CriticIn its struggle to present an unbiased portrait that balances Jewish and Palestinian viewpoints evenly, the film loses some narrative focus. Nevertheless, it presents a valuable history lesson that points out the dire effects of British occupation in the
10/17/07
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