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MAX
"...just because people are objecting to 'Max'
for all the wrong reasons doesn't make it a good film, and it's
not. It's a bizarre curiosity memorable mainly for the way it fritters
away its potentially interesting subject matter via a banal script,
unimpressive acting and indifferent direction...Though Cusack is
always interesting and Taylor certainly looks the part with a shock
of black hair falling across his face, neither succeeds in enabling
his character to rise above the schematic. Providing remarkably
little help is the lackluster nature of the words they have to work
with." -- Kenneth Turan, The
Los Angeles Times
The movie has the temerity to imply that had Hitler found a patron,
his life might have taken an entirely different turn...In its eccentric
way, the movie is rather like a theme park. It is a historical fantasy
connecting fact and wild supposition into a provocative work of
fiction that poses ticklish questions about art and society. And
the inability of Rothman, the quintessence of European urbanity
and intellectual sophistication, to grasp the implications of Hitlerworld
points ominously toward the future...'Max' may be a brashly inventive
film, but it is not an offensive one." --Stephen
Holden, The New York Times
"The movie winds up reducing the tragic history of the 20th century
to a paradox of bad timing." --J.
Hoberman, The Village Voice
"I don't care whether Adolf Hitler had his feelings hurt as a young
man. Nor do I care about any of the other factors that contributed
to the development of his morally deficient personality, resulting
in his rise in Germany and, finally, to the Holocaust. I just don't
want him humanized for me in that way by a movie like 'Max.'" --Marshall
Fine, The Journal News
"The tedium of Meyjes's discourse is overwhelming but certainly
not as much as the preposterous comedy by which he repeatedly foreshadows
the holocaust bubbling on the horizon...'It's inhuman what they're
doing to these birds,' says Hitler staring at a nightingale locked
inside a cage... And when Max introduces Adolf to his wife and fellow
associate, the associate flippantly says he's never heard of him.
'Oh, you will,' says Max." --Ed Gonzalez,
Slant
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