All My Loved Ones

Despite a somewhat unpolished look and a few slips into cliche, the film makes up in sincerity what it lacks in sophistication.

It is crucial when viewing All My Loved Ones, with its fine ensemble cast and well-evoked sense of time and place, to remember that it unfolds as a recollection of David, a boy of perhaps 10 in 1938.

The material continues to carry its inherent emotional power and moral importance. As banal as the telling may be -- and at times, All My Loved Ones more than flirts with kitsch -- the tale commands attention.

The movie is loaded with good intentions, but in his zeal to squeeze the action and our emotions into the all-too-familiar dramatic arc of the Holocaust escape story, Minac drains his movie of all individuality.

A situation of such inherent drama only suffers from the director's attempts to intensify it, and eventually, the scenes of professional and personal rejection begin to suffer from an overabundance of pathos.

Clearly inspired by, though not in the same dramatic league as, "Schindler's List," pic is marred by uneven perfs and lacks the intensity.

"Schindler's List" it ain't, and the whole is rendered occasionally surreal by Janusz Stoklosa's laughably heavy-handed score.