Too many films exploit the perils faced by children when the social contract is ruptured, but Mammoth earns its cruel, sensationalistic turns and then some.
Comment
11/23/09
Mammoth (2009)
56
%
Tomatometer
How does the Tomatometer work 
Reviews Counted:18
Fresh:10
Rotten:8
Average Rating:5.7/10
Synopsis: Mammoth revolves around successful New York couple Leo (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Ellen (Michelle Williams). Leo is the creator of a booming website, and has stumbled into a world of money and big... [More]
Reviews for Mammoth
1 - 18 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
The message of the movie seems to be that Americans can solve guilt by paying the right person.
11/21/09
Features various storylines centered on the same weighty themes, which mean to say so much about the human condition and modernity that they end up saying perilously little.
11/20/09
The overlapping stories, the emotional disconnect, the heavy-handed symbolism -- no, it's not a movie from the makers of Babel, its a mumbling, stammering copycat drama from Swedish director Lukas Moodysson.
11/20/09
Takes a bit too long to get going and perhaps bites off more thematically than it can chew, but it has too many intriguing ideas and spectacular performances to be dismissed.
11/20/09
In Mammoth, when a rich child eats her lunch in New York, a poor boy in the Philippines cries. And so it goes, as privilege begets exploitation with grimly deterministic logic and pages and pages of bad dialogue.
11/20/09
Top CriticLess obsessed with coincidence and more interested in the ways people from various cultures connect, or don't quite connect, in everyday situations.
11/20/09
Mammoth manages to be as affecting as it is heartfelt.
11/20/09
Top CriticAny semblance of subtlety was unfortunately lost in translation.
11/20/09
Focuses on the strong and universal desire of both the rich and the poor for a loving connection with their children and the obstacles which can hinder that intimacy.
11/19/09
The movie lacks the personal touch that’s distinguished even Moodysson’s "difficult" films.
11/19/09
a remarkably subtle exploration of family in a time of capitalism
11/19/09
Moodysson hasn’t exactly descended to Babel-level pabulum with Mammoth, his first foray into English...
11/18/09
English, Tagalog, and Thai are spoken in Swedish writer-director Lukas Moodysson's Mammoth, but he communicates only in the idiom of Crash and Babel: the Esperanto of feel-bad humanism.
11/17/09
It is all too simplistic and obvious and increasingly the preachy tone becomes irritating.
11/05/09
Moodysson actually really loves his characters and wants them to be happy, rather than putting stock characters though a series of heavily predictable trials and tribulations on the way to a forced happy ending.
10/18/09
It's an easy movie to snipe at, but its quest for authenticity, even in its most affluent characters, is honorable.
07/24/09
Comes with too much repetitive exposition and lacks an emotional payoff.
02/13/09
Top Critic1 - 18 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
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