Forty years after his breakthrough, Menzel has returned with I Served The King Of England, and it's like he never left.
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08/28/08
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I Served the King of England (2008)
96 %
Reviews Counted: 25 Fresh: 24 Rotten:1 Average Rating: 7.9/10
Rated: R [See Full Rating]
Runtime: 2 hrs
Theatrical Release: Aug 22, 2008 Limited
Synopsis: Director Jirí Menzel and novelist Bohumil Hrabal teamed up with Oscar-winning results for the classic CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS, and this Czech film repeats their pairing. I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND follows Jan Dite through his life which, as a man living in 1930s Czechoslovakia, has more... [More]
Genre: Foreign Films
Starring: Ivan Barnev, Oldøich Kaiser, Julia Jentsch, Marian Labuda, Milan Lasica
Director: Jirí Menzel
Screenwriter: Jirí Menzel
Producer: Robert Schaffer, Andrea Metcalfe
Composer: Ales Brezina
Screenwriter: Jirí Menzel
Producer: Robert Schaffer, Andrea Metcalfe
Composer: Ales Brezina
Reviews
The film remains a strange comic fable about finding happiness in the most outlandish of places.
08/27/08
I Served the King of England ends up a curious combination of raunchy merriment and malignant undercurrents.
08/27/08
Top Critic
Do away with the clever style and you're still left with a rousing picaresque of life's beautiful-sad ironies.
08/27/08
Top Critic
Veteran Czech director Jirí Menzel serves up an epic in miniature, one apolitical man's magical realistic journey through life during the shifting sands of WWII Europe.
08/27/08
A robust and ribald picaresque tale told with comic élan and philosophical panache.
08/26/08
Jiří Menzel’s I Served the King of England is a Czech national epic served up with champagne and truffles.
08/25/08
Top Critic
...has loads to say about ambition, greed, hedonism and redemption and does it with intelligence and wit.
08/25/08
a bitingly effective satire . . . a lively scamper through decadence, desire, and the conflation of food and sex such that hasn't been seen in cinema since Tom Jones
08/21/08
Why can’t Americans make comedies as playful but serious as Jiri Menzel’s I Served the King of England?
08/18/08
Top Critic
Dite is a wonderfully sweet character who leads an interesting life. When the closing credits roll, you'll be glad that you were able to vicariously go along on his little adventures.
08/13/08
Writer/director Jiri Menzel's ambitious filmic adaptation of Bohumil Hrabal's picaresque novel about a diminutive Czech waiter with dreams of becoming a millionaire and of owning his own hotel, is a rich black comedy steeped in wartime experience and sexu
08/13/08
A return to form and a comeback for Menzel: His first film in over a decade, an adaptation of Hrabal's 1974 novel, displays the serio-comedic and poignantly humanistic perspective that has informed the Czech director's best work.
08/06/08
A darkly humorous, exquisitely performed and filmed story of a Czech Everyman against the backdrop of the Nazi and Communist domination of Czechoslovakia.
07/29/08
By the time it crosses the finish line the film has nearly stopped dead.
06/09/08
Funny, vivacious and profound without being earnest, this is an utter delight.
05/09/08
Enjoyable, superbly directed and frequently funny wartime adventure with a superb central performance from Ivan Barney.
05/08/08
This magical realist memoir of the small men (and women) in history is a sprawling carnivalesque treat - as tall and refreshing as a tankard of Czech beer and with the same bitter aftertaste.
04/30/08
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