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Feast of Love

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Critics' Reviews

Metascore
®
51
Mixed or Average Reviews
out of 100
Older Filmmaker Makes for Gooey 'Feast'
By Justin Chang, Variety.com

Living up to its grandiose title, "Feast of Love" is a cinematic essay on the infinite varieties of amour — from the reckless ardor of youth to the cooler, more compromised emotional landscape of marriage. Septuagenarian director Robert Benton brings his characteristically fine touch with actors and appreciation for the female form to this tastefully erotic ensembler, but compassion finally outstrips insight in a drama as soft-headed as it is soft-hearted. A strong cast topped by Morgan Freeman probably won't keep "Love" from remaining mostly unrequited in theaters, though it may attract older audiences on home video. ... More on Variety.com

Copyright 2007 Variety, Inc. All rights reserved.

Living up to its grandiose title, "Feast of Love" is a cinematic essay on the infinite varieties of amour — from the reckless ardor of youth to the cooler, more compromised emotional landscape of marriage. Septuagenarian director Robert Benton brings his characteristically fine touch with actors and appreciation for the female form to this tastefully erotic ensembler, but compassion finally outstrips insight in a drama as soft-headed as it is soft-hearted. A strong cast topped by Morgan Freeman probably won't keep "Love" from remaining mostly unrequited in theaters, though it may attract older audiences on home video. ... More on Variety.com

Copyright 2007 Variety, Inc. All rights reserved.

90
Time: Richard Corliss
Sexy, funny, sad and defiantly romantic, Feast of Love is the rare movie to cuddle up to.Read Full Review »
75
ReelViews: James Berardinelli
Feast of Love's greatest strength is that it's about people and involves universal emotions. It's not great art but it is enjoyable soap opera.Read Full Review »
63
USA Today: Claudia Puig
The story teeters on the edge of soap opera and emotional manipulation, but director Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer) pulls back in the nick of time. What results is an involving and often poignant examination of love and loss.Read Full Review »
63
Boston Globe: Wesley Morris
The bodies are athletic, young, and white, and yet this is not the sport sex we usually see in Hollywood movies. It's the sex of adulation. Sometimes the director Robert Benton goes heavy on the hydraulic positioning, but his movie is scarcely mechanical.Read Full Review »
63
Philadelphia Inquirer: Steven Rea
As a meditation on the vicissitudes of love, on the need for people to connect, and the struggles that come by both making and missing those connections, the movie is wading-pool deep.Read Full Review »
50
Village Voice: Julia Wallace
For a film that purports to be an epic consideration of Love in Our Time, Feast is strikingly unthoughtful and uninterested in any but the most obvious kind of romantic love.Read Full Review »
50
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Owen Gleiberman
Far too cloyingly pleased with its own humanity.Read Full Review »
50
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: Roger Ebert
Benton has made better movies, but this one has no organic reality.Read Full Review »
40
The New York Times: Stephen Holden
A more accurate name for Feast of Love might be “Feast of Breasts.” At every opportunity, Mr. Benton turns the camera on his actresses’ gleaming torsos. These beautifully lighted soft-core teases lend an erotic frisson to a movie that in most other ways feels enervated.Read Full Review »
20
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Carina Chocano
Love is a many-splendored thing in Robert Benton's dull romantic fantasy Feast of Love, though none of its splendors rings true.Read Full Review »
See all Feast of Love reviews at metacritic.com »