Danny Leiner's film offers a collection of quiet, tidy vignettes that occur simultaneously in New York City a year after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Comment
06/22/06
The Great New Wonderful (2006)
73
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:40
Fresh:29
Rotten:11
Average Rating:6.6/10
Consensus: Set in post-9/11 New York, this largely evocative dramedy interweaves the stories of five disconnected individuals who share an unspoken emotional malaise that shadows their attempts at returning to normal life.
Synopsis: Viewers may be shocked to learn that a film set one year after September 11th was directed by Danny Leiner, the man responsible for such stoner comedies as HAROLD AND KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE and... [More]
Starring: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Edie Falco, Tony Shalhoub, Olympia Dukakis
Director: Danny Leiner
Reviews for The Great New Wonderful
Top Critic[Maggie] Gyllenhaal ... slips into character with greater ease than any other young American actress now in the movies.
07/26/06
There are good performances from nearly everyone, particularly Shah and Gyllenhaal, and the sub-90-minute running time whips right by; but there's nothing extraordinary here either.
07/20/06
The film, set in September 2002, employs 9-11 as a thematic crutch, positing the attacks as little more than a backdrop for its characters' other, infinitely less significant woes.
06/20/06
Luminous, affecting, and at times humorous take on 9/11's aftermath.
08/18/06
Top CriticNot all the little stories and vignettes work (some seem almost pointless), but most of the performances, especially a haughty luncheon under a veil of politeness with Gyllenhaal and Falco, are spot on, involving and revealing.
08/31/06
The movie itself is having an identity crisis; it tries to make 9/11 a significant day in these people's lives and it has nothing to do with that day, both at the same time.
08/15/06
It's in the Magnolia/Short Cuts vein and, although it's not as good as those classics, the characters and their dilemmas are absorbing.
08/10/06
It may be the 9/11 movie to which the most people can relate. For most of us, that date wasn't about personal heroics or losing loved ones or survival. It was about processing the impossible and realizing that life, with all its ups and downs, must go on.
08/25/06
Yet -- and quite in spite of its plinky piano score -- The Great New Wonderful conjures occasional vividness, irrepressible pain or insight.
08/18/06
If the writer, Sam Catlin, can’t begin to make the storylines jell, he does elicit squirms and titters from the shark-filled moats between peoples’ conscious and unconscious lives.
06/19/06
...The Great New Wonderful boasts a pervasively aimless atmosphere that slowly but surely wears the viewer down and ensures that the film's overtly positive elements are ultimately rendered moot.
11/29/09
The Great New Wonderful squanders a fine opportunity: to examine the emotional effect of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, on the lives of New Yorkers one year later.
06/22/06
Top CriticThere are amusing moments sprinkled throughout the film, a few genuine laughs, and some nicely played dramatic scenes.
09/12/06
This is one of the more depressing films to come out this year.
06/24/06
Writer Sam Catlin and director Danny Leiner have fashioned an alert, shrewdly observed portrait of a moment in time.
07/20/06
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04/29/09
Leiner...wants to say something important, but his cinematic and narrative technique isn't up to the task.
08/24/06
A riveting and quirky movie about the aftershocks of 9/11 in the lives of a group of people still in denial a year later.
06/22/06
Never mind that the neuroses of these characters cannot be traced to 9/11. The stories are intriguing.
06/26/06
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