A portal to your own dreams in an alternate 1930s Winnipeg.

The wildly uneven Maddin delivers another movie more interesting for its aspirations than its content. The light approach doesn't pay off in watchability and an intriguing premise is left flapping in the wind.

it seems like it's intentionally dense, inaccessible and cheesy. for not being a comedy those qualities are a bad thing. i was amused by the throw back to german expressionism, but i'm not exactly sure i liked it.

"Maddin gets a bigger budget and some famous actors but unfortunately, this is a failed experiment... The dubbed voice-overs, silly and overlong musical scenes, crude attacks on the USA and messy story don't blend well with the usual Maddin B&W cinematography tricks, making it all a pretty dull gimmick."

The glass legs filled with beer was kind of funny. How does he dream this stuff up?! Good casting of McKinney and Rossellini. They know how to work the material. Hitting the tone isn't enough for me, however. Maddin indisputably has one of the more original voices out there. Just not one I care for, it seems.

"Guy Maddin's snow globe cinema, hermetically sealed in ghostly adoration of silent cinema, is well matched to this darkly comic fable." - Joshua Vasquez

Guy Maddin is one of the most widely inconsistent chaps I've ever come across in my film experience. Hopefully, this is the lowest point.

I think it's stupid.

Reminds me of Lars Von Trier's Europa, but filtered through a pastiche of different genres (musical, comedy, et al). Its visual style is indebted to silent film: grainy black-and-white (with occasional bursts of color) cinematography, with expressionist influences. The story is bizarre (and, to a point, very gimmicky), but on the whole it's a very entertaining and consistently compelling narrative, involving love, betrayal, jealousy. Utterly unique and original.

Maddin's visual sense is so astoundingly unique. A pastiche of silent-era styles, heavy on the expressionism, with modern avant-garde touches. But goddamn it, he is simply incapable of making a story worth sitting through. Quirk built upon meaningless quirk, humor that falls completely flat, interesting premise utterly wasted, awful casting choice in McKinney. This is the closest Maddin has come to developing a decent plot, but ultimately it still feels empty and mindlessly gimmicky.

The Weirdest Movie about Winnipeg. Love it.

Guy Maddin being weird, as usual. Sometimes threatens to wear out its welcome, but never quite does so

One of the strangest little films I've ever seen....

very inventive