Not really my bag. Though the visuals were quite nice, with a very distinctive and prominent texture, and I appreciated the "silent movie" style, I started to tire of everything seemingly being in quotation marks. The international music battle premise is pretty amusing, but the whole movie is so steeped in that same zany and absurd mood, that for me it was overwhelming. Lacking dynamics, everything runs together - I didn't care about the characters and things that were happening, nor did any particular joke or idea stand out from the rest. It didn't leave a brand on the brain, so to speak.

Crazy mix of the oddest language, accent, locations, actors and plot you will ever see. There is an awful lot of beer in this movie ! Hilarious and leaves you wondering about the directors' sanity.

fun

A contest to find the country that can make the titular claim is documented with much out-of-sync talk and frenetically edited, deliberately damaged black & white film. Maddin's stylistic conceits will either warm your heart or drive you nuts; unfortunately, despite evidently sharing his love of awkward, hazy early sound films, I felt like I was watching one of those crime reenactments on 'America's Most Wanted,' if Garrison Keillor hosted that. The story is not merely an idea stretched far past its ideal expiration but an in-joke that seems most likely funny only to Maddin himself. God bless it for being adventurous and unique, but its smarminess did me in with David Mamet-like speed.

Not really my bag. Though the visuals were quite nice, with a very distinctive and prominent texture, and I appreciated the "silent movie" style, I started to tire of everything seemingly being in quotation marks. The international music battle premise is pretty amusing, but the whole movie is so steeped in that same zany and absurd mood, that for me it was overwhelming. Lacking dynamics, everything runs together - I didn't care about the characters and things that were happening, nor did any particular joke or idea stand out from the rest. It didn't leave a brand on the brain, so to speak.

I have the same exact complaint I had with Archangel, Careful, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs and Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary. Maddin should either shit (make silent films) or get off the pot (make sound films). Not only could he be the only one making silent films, but he's also a good filmmaker (i.e. - you can tell, each time you groan at his dubbed, staccato dialogue that, without it, he would still be a major talent). The actors - his first recognizable ones to date (aside from Shelly Duvall in Twilight) - tackle his weird brand of 20th Century flavor and construction with little difficulty. Isabella Rossellini, Mark McKinney and Maria de Medeiros fall square into Maddin's old school mold, McKinney proving without question that there's life after Kids in the Hall (but, really, I miss it). Solid, entertaining work. Frustrating repeat offender.

Bizarre movie. Reminded me of David Lynch.

70 out of 100
Part of me has a feeling Guy Maddin has many good films in him, but I wonder if he actually has a great film in him. If the fact that I actually found this ridicoulous movie deeply moving and actually sad in parts, the answer is probably yes. Although I can't honestly go into what the ballance between crazy ideas (psychic tapeworms, ambassadors of sadness, beer glass legs) and this under layer of hurt. But as long as it's always fun to watch it's hard to complain until he inevitably devloves into self parody.

A double-amputee totters around on glass legs filled with beer, and a woman claims to communicate with a tapeworm living inside her—welcome to Guy Maddin’s most “mainstream” film yet. The Canadian director’s avant-garde wildness gets reined in only slightly for this story of a Depression-era brewing tycoon (Isabella Rossellini) who launches a world-wide competition to determine which nation produces the most mournful music. The plot is in some ways pretty straightforward melodrama, but it’s infused with Maddin’s distinctive sensibility, both in the grainy, gauzy black-and-white visuals and the freaky, cheeky sense of humor on display in the hysterical competition showdowns (complete with brilliant play-by-play commentary). It’ll still be too wild for some tastes, but for others it will be love at first inexplicable sight. Just don’t be surprised to learn that compared to Saddest Music, Maddin’s other movies are really weird.

Extraordinaria mezcla de comedia hecha de alegorías y extravagantes numeros musicales (en amplio sentido) que resulta del todo adecuada como espejo de la actual crisis financiera (el film está ambientado en la gran depresión americana y el acontecimiento, aunque no de importancia en la trama es un telón de fondo en el que confluyen todos los elementos que Maddin pone en juego). No quiero decir con esto que el film de Maddin se alce aquí como un Loach de arte y ensayo, simplemente el film tiene esta resonancia actual, sin la cual seguiría siendo estupenda; Cuenta con las ocurrencias más sorprendente salidas de la mente de este gran cineasta (unas olimpiadas floclóricas -!?-). Me pregunto como de convencional fue el guión original de Ishiguro.