The most mawkish and shallow take on the holocaust committed to screen in many a long year.
Comment
06/13/08
The Aryan Couple (2004)
12
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:26
Fresh:3
Rotten:23
Average Rating:3.6/10
Starring: Gretchen Becker, Martin Landau, Judy Parfitt, Kenny Doughty
Director: John Daly
Reviews for The Aryan Couple
A case study in why Holocaust movies are so difficult to get right.
10/17/06
It's a sucrose period piece that somehow averts its gaze from the brutal reality of Nazi genocide, and manages to conjure a fatuous feelgood happy ending.
10/14/06
Top CriticIts intentions are doubtless good, but it ends up exploiting the Holocaust for cheap suspense.
10/14/06
Is over-arching sincerity only results in a stiffness that gives way to B-movie melodramatics in time for the cliché-ridden finale.
10/13/06
Top CriticMainly notable for its inappropriate, blithe sentimentality. In another film this would be the usual Hollywood hokum. In a film about the most serious subject imaginable, it amounts to moral idiocy.
10/06/06
Despite some tense scenes, this movie still falls fairly flat.
05/09/06
The worst Holocaust movie ever.
04/14/06
Put-upon Jews weep on cue or stare defiantly into the camera, spouting impromptu speeches about getting some of their own back one day; all the while, violins wail in the background.
04/13/06
The Aryan Couple gets great mileage out of its tension and suspense, and its commitment to developing its characters as real people in an unthinkable dilemma.
02/23/06
he story loses its grip and momentum during the laboriously realized denouement, which follows the hired help's struggle to escape to Switzerland amid overwrought action sequences propelled by a shrieking violin-driven soundtrack.
02/09/06
The whole thing is coarse and vulgar, as it hides its low fascinations behind a scrim of Holocaust piety until it becomes pure kitsch.
11/18/05
Top CriticA handsome Holocaust melodrama hobbled by a transparent and cartoonish script.
11/18/05
Pure sentimental melodrama, with not a moment's reflection on any issue larger than the fate of our heroes.
11/17/05
These two are so pretty and vacant they seem better suited to modeling for a perfume ad than taking on the Third Reich.
11/17/05
Potentially powerful subject matter is given an unconvincingly melodramatic treatment.
12/18/04
Pic's dubious brand of heroism, half-baked historical sense, simplistic dialogue, flat staging and barely formed characters make for sluggish sledding.
12/09/04
Top CriticIt turns real genocide into another kind of B-movie moustache-twirling.
12/09/04
Engrossing and satisfying, The Aryan Couple shows just how vital a movie made in the solid British style of traditional filmmaking can be.
12/09/04
Top CriticDirected with the flat artlessness of a lower-rung Masterpiece Theater entry, pulling heartstrings with Igor Khoroshev’s lugubrious score and scripted with banal bromides insulting to its subject matter.
12/09/04
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