A socially-relevant and meaningful film from South Africa which supplies plenty of reasons to feel optimistic about humanity's prospects.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 28, 2007

Mostly manages to feel authentic and uplifting, putting a human face on a complex colonial culture.

| Mar 1, 2007

Cape of Good Hope is a film about people we want so very much to love, people who keep us watching - and keep us smiling.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 14, 2006

... there's a temptation to call Cape a South African Crash, but it lacks both complexity and compromised characters.

| Original Score: C | Jan 24, 2006

Brown's spunky, funny Kate helps hold the piece together.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 20, 2006

There's so much Altmanesque activity in the film that even if some storylines temporarily don't work, others keep making up for them.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 13, 2006

No matter how heavy-handed the sentimentality gets, the film's intentions seem sincere.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 5, 2006

Around the margins of the story are characters whose behavior is unique.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 5, 2006

A post-apartheid film in which the characters are less concerned with politics than with matters of the heart.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 5, 2006

Despite its shortcomings, Cape of Good Hope is a hopeful piece of humanism that is difficult to begrudge too much.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 18, 2005

The stories are interlinked effectively, and the film strikes an upbeat note yet does not address racism and discrimination. For all its affection toward its characters, however, the film is too long and too slack.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 16, 2005

With its warm heart and charming characters, Good Hope is a good choice.

| Original Score: B | Dec 16, 2005

Grounded in the easy rhythms of daily life, this charming little film shows unexpected grit.

| Dec 15, 2005

The film's strengths are offset by flaws including an excessiveness cutesiness (there are far too many shots of adorable puppies), a tendency toward sentimental cliches and too many jarring shifts in tone.

Full Review | Dec 13, 2005

A South African movie that departs from the political strife of Apartheid - there are still issues of race and class, but they're approached in a more roundabout, accessible way that isn't so in your face.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 3, 2005

It's hopeful but not saccharine, ambitious but only occasionally broad. And the fact that it's set in a country still grappling with the legacy of apartheid makes its good will all the more relevant.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 2, 2005

[A] warmhearted film ...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 23, 2005

I like the spirit of it and some of the performances but [there are] too many cutesy whimsical moments, too many coincidences that just kind of neatly tied things together.

Full Review | Nov 21, 2005

The picture isn't devoid of substance, but it doesn't allow itself to get mired in message either. It conveys its themes via likable, relatable protagonists.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 16, 2005

The intertwining of separate story strands is solidly structured, and the different mini-narratives resolved in unsurprising yet satisfying ways.

| Nov 14, 2005