Broken Embraces Reviews

Interesting drama - worth watching, but not a great film

I love Pedro Almodovar films - but this one was just not good. Broken Embraces had all the Almodovar elements - the quirky characters with their... rosis, the wacky narrative, and the colorful scene designs - but, despite all of that, it felt more like a shell of his earlier movies. Full Review

Granted that I'm not totally familiar with Director Almodovar, but I found Broken Embraces totally boring. Maybe the Spanish would find it "hot... stuff" but the plot is disjoined that situations are presented that have absolutely no relevance to the storyline. A gay son with a gay bedroom scene? Why??? Made no sense as to why Almodovar would insert this. It went nowhere. The same effect could have been had by making the son simply angry with the father for general principles. And this was only one thing that made no sense. At one point the two prinicipals were returning to Madrid at night dropped off the face of the earth for a tryst. At a round-about they stop for a lingering kiss? Please. Middle aged people don't do that. I keep thinking, "What were all these major reviewers smokin' when they wrote their overflowing reviews?" Full Review

I never thougfht I'd call an Almodovar film boring, but that's precisely what I thought about Broken Embraces. I don't know what happened to... ar. He used to make clever, wacky, funny films like Law of Desire, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Live Flesh, etc. Now it seems like he's making all these serious and glum films like Broken Embarces, Bad Education, Talk to Her, etc. Although I liked Volver, I still think Almodovar was at his prime during the '80s. He didn't take himself so seriously and was more adventurous. In a way, he reminds me of Woody Allen. Like Almodovar, Allen made inventive and brilliant films at the beginning of his carreer, such as Annie Hall, Manhattan, The Purple Rose of Cairo, etc. I found Broken Embraces too long, the characters uninteresting with nothing really important to say, and the pacing too slow. Full Review