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Movies / Upcoming / Enlighten Up!
Enlighten Up!

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Enlighten Up! (2009)

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Reviews Counted:34

Fresh:19

Rotten:15

Average Rating:6/10

Consensus: Enlighten Up! is a funny, warmhearted documentary that's uneven in spots, but thought-provoking nonetheless.

Runtime: 82 mins

Genre: Education/General Interest

US Box Office: $227,790

Synopsis: Kate Churchill is a filmmaker and a dedicated yoga practitioner who insists that yoga can transform anyone. She decides to prove it. Her plan: select a subject, immerse him in yoga and follow him... Kate Churchill is a filmmaker and a dedicated yoga practitioner who insists that yoga can transform anyone. She decides to prove it. Her plan: select a subject, immerse him in yoga and follow him until he finds a yoga practice that transforms him. Her subject: Nick Rosen a skeptical, 29 year-old journalist living in New York City.

Intrigued by the opportunity to peek behind the curtain of a 5.7 billion dollar “spiritual” industry, Nick signs on to investigate yoga for 6 months. Before he can say OM, he finds himself twisted up like a pretzel, surrounded by celebrity yogis, true believers, kooks, entrepreneurs and a gentle teacher from Brazil who leads his class with his feet behind his head.

The more Nick investigates yoga the more contradictions he discovers, leading him to question whether yoga is anything more than a workout. As Nick searches for concrete facts and discards the lofty spiritual theories of his yoga teachers, he strays further from Kate’s original plan. The two find themselves lost in Northern India, embroiled in a struggle between Kate’s expectations and Nick’s overt rejection of “spirituality.”

They circle the globe talking to mystics, gurus, mad men and saints searching for the true meaning of yoga. Ultimately, both Nick and Kate end up in places they never could have imagined. They don’t find the answers to their questions, they find much more. --© Official Site [More]

Starring: Nick Rosen

Starring: Nick Rosen

Director: Kate Churchill

Director: Kate Churchill
Story: Khari Streeter, Jonathon Hexner, Kate Churchill
Producer: Kate Churchill
Composer: Krishna Venkatesh
Studio: Balcony Releasing

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Reviews for Enlighten Up!

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1 - 20 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
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Director Kate Churchill ends up with a non-story in her feature Enlighten Up! when her subject fails to experience the changes she had been expecting.

Full Review Source: Toronto Star | comment Comment
08/28/09
Greg Quill
Greg Quill
Toronto Star

Weirdly, it's the documentarian who seems to unravel throughout.

Full Review Source: Jam! Movies | comment Comment
08/28/09
Jim Slotek
Jim Slotek
Jam! Movies

What's Rosen's dating life got to do with yoga? Nothing really, beyond a director's last-ditch attempt to show dramatic tension in her film before it peters out into inconclusiveness.

Full Review Source: Globe and Mail | comment Comment
08/27/09
Liam Lacey
Liam Lacey
Globe and Mail

Give director Churchill credit for including her own obstinacy in the movie

Full Review Source: Movie Habit | comment Comment
07/26/09
Marty Mapes
Marty Mapes
Movie Habit

In the end, both the believer and the skeptic end up less sure of their beliefs than they were when they started. Which must be at least a small step towards true enlightenment, right?

Full Review Source: Capital Times (Madison, WI) | comment Comment
06/26/09
Rob Thomas
Rob Thomas
Capital Times (Madison, WI)

Enlighten Up! is a low-key, charming trip.

Full Review Source: Dallas Morning News | comment Comment
06/19/09
Cary Darling
Cary Darling
Dallas Morning News

While Enlighten Up! is ultimately just a surface look at yoga, it's still interesting, if not exactly enlightening, to watch the true believer and the jaded New York journo clash their way down the road to, one hopes, some sort of spiritual resolution.

Full Review Source: Austin Chronicle | comment Comment
06/19/09
Marc Savlov
Marc Savlov
Austin Chronicle

When she inserts herself into the action, she reveals only her own insecurity. It ends up being very enlightening, but probably not in the way Churchill intends.

Full Review Source: Kansas City Star | comment Comment
06/12/09
Loey Lockerby
Loey Lockerby
Kansas City Star

There's a lot of talk about the downward-facing dog in Enlighten Up, a yoga documentary I'm giving the downward-facing thumb.

Full Review Source: St. Paul Pioneer Press | comment Comment
06/12/09
Chris Hewitt (St. Paul)
Chris Hewitt (St. Paul)
St. Paul Pioneer Press

What Enlighten Up illustrates about the dynamic between filmmaker and subject is even more interesting than what it says about yoga.

Full Review Source: Movie Retriever | comment Comment
06/12/09
Brian Tallerico
Brian Tallerico
Movie Retriever

While Enlighten Up! is entertaining and provocative regardless, it’s too bad that Churchill was so focused on whether Rosen was having his preconceptions shattered that she never stopped to consider her own.

Full Review Source: AV Club | comment Comment
06/11/09
Noel Murray
Noel Murray
AV Club

This is a peaceful kind of film, not terribly eventful, but I suppose we wouldn’t want a yoga thriller. Relax. Let it happen. Or not.

Full Review Source: Chicago Sun-Times | comment Comment
06/11/09
Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

As a movie, Enlighten Up! doesn't really go anywhere.

Full Review Source: Washington Post | comment Comment
06/05/09
Michael O'Sullivan
Michael O'Sullivan
Washington Post
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

When Nick encounters B.K.S. Iyengar, the legendary guruji and one of the foremost figures of yoga, Churchill's mostly lightweight film radiates some spiritual light.

Full Review Source: Philadelphia Inquirer | comment Comment
05/29/09
Carrie Rickey
Carrie Rickey
Philadelphia Inquirer

Rosen makes a good correlative for all of us who don't doubt that flexibility and fitness are worthy goals but who cringe at some of the quasi-religious babble that seems inextricably bound up with yoga.

Full Review Source: Oregonian | comment Comment
05/15/09
Marc Mohan
Marc Mohan
Oregonian

Director Kate Churchill's acknowledged struggles to impose a story on ... six months' worth of documentary footage is not particularly successful...

Full Review Source: Playback:stl | comment Comment
05/08/09
Sarah Boslaugh
Sarah Boslaugh
Playback:stl

The premise ends up muddling a movie that might have been enlightening.

Full Review Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch | comment Comment
05/08/09
Joe Williams
Joe Williams
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The breezy title of this engaging documentary suggests that it isn't going to solve the big questions of life, but will at least treat its subject -- yoga in its many forms from the sublime to the utterly absurd -- with humor and an open spirit.

Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | comment Comment
05/01/09
Walter V. Addiego
Walter V. Addiego
San Francisco Chronicle

A pleasure in its open-mindedness. If you're up for a safe, light, skeptic's look into the many variations of modern yoga, take a peek.

Full Review Source: Hollywood Report Card | comment Comment
04/24/09
Ross Anthony
Ross Anthony
Hollywood Report Card

What elevates the movie is the refusal of Rosen -- a grounded, non-believing pragmatist — to make the conversion to yoga spirituality and bliss that Churchill so wants for him, and for the arc of her documentary.

Full Review Source: Boston Phoenix | comment Comment
04/23/09
Gerald Peary
Gerald Peary
Boston Phoenix
 
 
1 - 20 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
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