Why so much hype?

Good movie but grossly overrated

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

"Auberge espagnole"? Maybe the best US equivalent would be "potluck supper," which sounds both yucky and boring; the movie's not that bad, but it could have been better. Our protagonist, Xavier, is a bland graduate student who's inexplicably rude to his mother (he scorns her as a "baba"—a hippie) but works his father's old-boy connections to get a plum government job. It's a familiar storyline, like "Doc Martin" or "Local Hero," where the clueless careerist gets in touch with his inner niño (cheel, bairn…) in a magical place like Barcelona, Cornwall or the Highlands. The potluck roommates don't get much screen time, but there's a comic-relief Englishman who does an unfunny reprise of Basil Fawltey's "don't say anything about the war" routine, and we see way too much of him. In the best scene, a feisty Belgian lesbian (Cécile de France—not her first Belgian lesbian role, btw!) teaches our hero how to handle a woman; Audrey Tatou's pretty much wasted as his needy, petulant girlfriend, but Juliette Godrèche is good, in an underwritten role, as the woman who gets handled. It's one of those movies where the hero sits down at the end and starts to write the story you've just been told…but Proust it ain't. Maybe we're too old for this sort of thing, but I doubt there's anybody who gets all dewy-eyed about the EU these days. Cute cast, great locations (¡Gaudí!), a little dated but still watchable; just don't expect too much.

Its a movie book.Between the opening and closing of the paperback cover resides a sweet fresh movie avoiding the cliché life and still talking about the same old love,friendship,marriage and all the likes.Dare not miss the intricacies of each scene(highlights being the after party scene or the silent narrations of Xavier,annoyingly funny British brother or the rendezvous between Xavier and Anne-Sophie).I would rather call it peeping through a keyhole into the lives of strange expatriates.It all looks that natural at the core. Cinematic experience starts getting richer with addition of every character.Though the movie does not deal with going into depth of each character and is based on their superficial portrayal,its more about life on the surface for 5-6-7 roommates and the intersections.An interesting mix of events is sure to happen when each one comes from different world and still mingle like a perfect cocktail,secret recipe being the flavor of youth.A french arty-farty movie,it still melts like cheese with the air of warmth surrounding each of the characters.

Thanks Mr. Klapish and Romain for this sweet movie (and its sequel) because if i want to talk me about me, i just have to recommend it: same name, same job in Treasure Ministry, same experience abroad with European fellows, same passion for writing, same confusion about romances, same feeling about not understanding how world spins.I can't say how personal the story is personal to the director but it speaks true about trips (it's about leaving what you know and going in the unknown), about arrivals (maps, accommodation, marking the streets, decorating your room with pictures), about romances abroad (a way to have new ones)...As in the sequel, the director isn't boring because it adds a lot of funny moments and innovative storytelling with a perfect voice-over from Romain.I never been too much attracted to Spain but the last two movies I saw happened there and were very personal for me. Is it an omen?

"When you first arrive in a new city, nothing makes sense. Everything's unknown, virgin... After you've lived here, walked these streets, you'll know them inside out. You'll know these people. Once you've lived here, crossed this street 10, 20, 1000 times... it'll belong to you because you've lived there. That was about to happen to me, but I didn't know it yet."The quote is when I decided that I'm going to love this movie, 10/10 kind of love. The premise looked really interesting and promising, I already liked the way the movie was made (camera work etc.), and quotes like that are gems that I love to find and that I don't find often. It felt very refreshing and quite original too - maybe someone has, but I haven't seen many movies with similar premise and everything, if any.I wish the whole movie could be like its first 15 or even 30 minutes (I don't look at the clock when a movie is that good, so I don't know when exactly it went all wrong). In fact I'd love to see a movie that would follow this movie's premise and first scenes.Sadly, it soon becomes a movie about mostly everyone sleeping with everyone (which, most of the time, is also everyone cheating on everyone), getting drunk/high and having no real goal in life. It gets so shallow that it becomes almost unwatchable and the main character, so promising at first, becomes the most despicable of them all. I wish I could give it a 10/10 for the beginning and 0/10 for the rest, but 2/10 has to do - there's no 0/10, so 1/10 is for everything else, and the good part gets one point.