So sternly manipulative that it becomes a chore to watch.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 3, 2009

"Jakob the Liar" isn't nearly as intolerable as you might expect of a Holocaust fable starring Robin Williams.

| Original Score: B | Sep 24, 2007

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 6, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 20, 2003

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 8, 2003

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 8, 2002

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Mar 22, 2002

A sober drama about hope as a postive spiritual force.

| Mar 4, 2002

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 24, 2001

I prefer Life Is Beautiful, which is clearly a fantasy, to Jakob the Liar, which is just as contrived and manipulative but pretends it is not.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Collapses in a heavy-breathing marriage of irony and unearned sentiment.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Jakob the Liar is too closed off to provide sufficient air for its deprecating humor (jokes, such as they are, fall flat), and the relentless struggle by the hapless people to survive is not adequately transmitted.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 1, 2000

I never lost awareness that I was watching actors speaking lines, not real people.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 1, 2000

None of these reliable performers can put enough spin on their roles to conjure up more than the good will they've earned in previous and better movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Sluggish!

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Awkward!

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 1, 2000

The movie's one odious concession to blatant sentimentality, and it never comes close to priming the audience's tear ducts.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 1, 2000

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 1, 2000

Jakob the Liar ends up as a film that is tirelessly trying to tell us something, but never quite gets to the point while making the audience work too hard for too little a payoff.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2000