Critic Reviews

More than anything, this is an intelligent audience picture, a solid and engrossing piece of old-school filmmaking, both humane and character driven, in which the various protagonists learn something - not too much and not too easily - about the nature of their lives.

An enjoyable mix of tragedy and comedy.

Tender irony and dark humor abound in Israeli director Eran Riklis's latest account of bureaucracy colliding with burgeoning compassion.

With the stranger in a strange land motif, the movie plays a little bit like the 2007 Israeli dramedy "The Band's Visit" and Liev Shreiber's "Everything Is Illuminated" rolled into one.

It's undeniably humanistic; resourceful and well managed, however, are a different story.

A disappointingly shallow story in which only the dead are named, and the living are reduced to stereotypes.

It serves up a broad humanistic lesson with absurdism and black comedy more sad than barbed.

Because we don't know or care much about the characters, this Israeli film never fulfills its potential as either an absurdist comedy or a humane drama.