I Served the King of England (2008)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:80
Fresh:64
Rotten:16
Average Rating:7.2/10
Consensus: With charm and an eye for life's bittersweet moments, Czech New Wave master Jiri Menzel paints a picaresque story with whimsy and intellect.
Runtime: 2 hrs
Genre: Foreign Films
US Box Office: $345,126
Synopsis: Czech director Jiri Menzel has worked only sporadically since making a splash in the 1960s with lauded features such as CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS. I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND is another welcome... [More]
Starring: Ivan Barnev, Oldøich Kaiser, Julia Jentsch, Marian Labuda
Director: Jirí Menzel
Reviews for I Served the King of England
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 3.5/5 |
While it's not exactly humming with narrative tension, Menzel's light touch and self-deprecating tone make for an engaging ride illuminated by some very sharp moments of truth. Full Review |
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The film's strength %u2013 it's whimsy %u2013 is also its weakness, with Menzel often letting his guard drop and letting the novel run away with the screenplay. But it's diverting and it's unique. Full Review |
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4/5 |
Click to read the article Full Review |
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A |
The world it depicts is too dangerous and too lovely to classify. Full Review |
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The movie is filled with wonderful moments, set pieces of absurdity, and a richness of humor. But underneath, Menzel and Hraba have a wry and sometimes painful story to tell of the history of their country in the 20th century. Full Review |
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3/4 |
I Served the King of England plays like a combination of Life Is Beautiful and Forrest Gump. Full Review |
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 2.5/4 |
Tasty enough but inoffensive even when it should offend, provoke, startle. Full Review |
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2/5 |
The pseudo-sensuality is annoying and the supposed absurdism and satire are flimsy. Full Review |
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[A] delightful, lighthearted satire, a quirky story of fantasy, wealth and pretty women with exposed nipples. Full Review |
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This inventive, charming picture-perfect picaresque tale of an ambitious young Czech rascal scrambling in the pre-Nazi and wartime eras marks a welcome and victorious return for Jiri Menzel, whose last major conquest was his 1967 Oscar-winning debut, C Full Review |
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3/4 |
Amelie meets The Pianist in I Served the King of England, one man’s surreal journey through 30 years of Czech history. Full Review |
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2.5/4 |
In the end, I Served the King of England is doomed to fail by comparison. Ironically, they are comparisons that the film itself keeps making. Full Review |
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4/4 |
"I Served the King of England" is like an endless feast, featuring one spectacular course after another. Somehow, you never get so full that you want to push yourself away from the table. Full Review |
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3.5/4 |
Celebrates the pleasures of life while acknowledging its tragedy and absurdity... Its attitude might be described as good-natured fatalism. Full Review |
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2/5 |
[It's] surrounded by and infused with the potential for meaning but feels like a lark: a bit of nothing whistling past the graveyard of 20th century European history without a thing to do but indulge itself. Full Review |
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4/4 |
Working from a novel and script by Bohumil Hrabal, director Jiri Menzel again achieves a seriocomic triumph, as he did with his Oscar-winning 1966 adaptation of Hrabal's Closely Watched Trains. Full Review |
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2.5/4 |
Most movies of this kind would lead towards redemption of sorts. Menzel prefers quiet introspection to loud conversion, and that's both a strength and weakness of this movie. Full Review |
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3/4 |
There's a mystical quality to King of England, a political satire that softens its barbs by locating them in the middle of a fable. Full Review |
CommentLatest News for I Served the King of England
April 27, 2008:
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