Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 11, 2005

Tiresome!

| Original Score: C- | Oct 28, 2003

It's hard to dislike a movie that identifies Russian mental patients as Bryan Adams' core audience.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2003

Vysotsky projects an essential sunniness that helps keep the film from turning maudlin.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2003

It may be based on a true story, but another filmmaker told it before -- and better.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 22, 2003

Janna, played with endearing toughness by Julia Vysotsky, is the heart of this film.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 21, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 16, 2003

It ultimately feels like a folly that sounded great in the filmmaker's head, so great that he had to be put on screen, where it flounders around with no small degree of embarrassment.

| Original Score: C- | Jul 11, 2003

Unbelievably insensitive in its depiction of the mentally ill.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Jul 11, 2003

It's an odd mix to combine the harsh reality of war with the surreal world of mental patients. This makes for a bizarre movie, but it has some really tender moments.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 11, 2003

War is insane. Insane people are cute. Bryan Adams is God. There, now that you've got these three principles down, you don't need to see House of Fools.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 8, 2003

Sub-Fellini nonsense.

| Jun 28, 2003

The use of Bryan Adams as the madwoman's imagined paramour is indicative of just how mediocre this movie is.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 15, 2003

Too disjointed, derivative and stylistically clumsy to be much more than an irritant.

| Original Score: C- | Jun 14, 2003

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 14, 2003

There's not much to Konchalovsky's tale ... but it's often beautifully told; a gentle fantasy of a harsh time.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 13, 2003

As Janna demonstrates, old assumptions and passions certainly die hard. And the worst is when they don't die at all.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 12, 2003

Often trying and not wholly successful but highly ambitious and ultimately rewarding.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 12, 2003

...the most striking feature of the film is the fundamental decency and even gentleness of both the soldiers and the mad

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jun 4, 2003

Based-on-a-true-tale drama about an insane asylum on the frontlines in the Chechen conflict is tired, trite and dull.

| Original Score: 1/5 | May 22, 2003