Vulture
Haneke's assault on our fantasy lives is shallow, unimaginative, and glacially unengaged -- a sucker punch without the redeeming passion of punk.
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Funny Games
Naomi Watts and Tim Roth star as a picture perfect couple on a lakeside vacation with their son. Their idyllic life is shattered when a pair of polite yet psychopathic house guests announce themselves. Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher) literally returns to his old stomping ground in this shot-for-shot remake of his incendiary 1997 classic Funny Games. The home-invasion plot and its attendant brutalisation are used to turn the tables on the viewer, taunting our appetite for on-screen sadism as vicarious entertainment.
2007Rating: R18+, Medium level violence, Adult themes108 minsFrance, UK, Germany, Italy, USA, Austria
DramaHorrorThriller
- Director:
- Michael Haneke ('Hidden', 'The Piano Teacher')
- Writer:
- Michael Haneke
- Cast:
- Naomi WattsTim RothMichael PittBrady CorbettDevon Gearhart
Funny Games / Reviews
Variety
As the film progresses, it becomes painfully clear there's no real point to the story; what we're witnessing is a cool, intellectual exercise, as devoid of character and motivation as the two psychos themselves.
Full reviewTime Out
It's not a reassuring vision but that's not the name of Haneke's particular game.
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The New Yorker
I would absolutely defend Haneke's right to relaunch his broadside on our voyeuristic vices, but he's not keeping up with the times; he's behind them.
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The New York Times
Funny Games, Michael Haneke's first English-language film - and a compulsively faithful replica of his notorious 1997 German-language feature of the same title - subjects its viewers to a long spectacle of wanton and gratuitous brutality.
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