To me, this movie is perfection.

As Good As It Gets

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

I have watched this film numerous times on the cable televisions not because it's so good, but because it's not as bad as the other films they broadcast constantly. "An American Rhapsody" is an interesting movie but nothing more.I watched it mainly because i heard Nasstasja Kinski was in it. I'm a big fan of hers but she isn't so great here and i think it's not her fault. It's the script actually. There's one awful moment in particular that i recall now and it always makes laugh but not because it's funny - it's really stupid actually. It's the scene where the little Zsuzsi says "shit" at the party, something that her sister has thought her - it's really one stupid and predictable situation and it's not funny at all. The conversations are also too standard sometimes and although the core story is really interesting i don't think the director has managed to justify it. I also didn't like Scarlett Johansson in the role of Zsuzsi. She is really boring in this film.Nevertheless the film is still very interesting at times. As i've already said the core story is really good, there are several very good scenes, Nastassja Kinski is still very attractive, the girl that plays Zsuzsi as a kid is very sweet and fun to watch. I also liked the depiction of America in the 50's and also the life behind the Iron Curtain. There are still some very interesting ideas. I especially liked the scenes when Zsuzsi return to Hungary as a teenager and the story that her grandmother tells her, when she realizes what her mother went through to secure her a good life. But Johansson really wasn't for that part. I don't understand why didn't they get an Eastern European actress. It would have been so much easier and much more efficient. But you know - it's an American film after all.Watch this film if you are in the mood of a good drama but don't really bother if you have something better to do.

"American Rhapsody" is an exceptionally well-written, acted, and directed Lifetime TV/Hallmark Hall of Fame-like movie. Based on the life of the debut writer/director Eva Gardos, the movie adds the immigrant refugee perspective to the teen-age rebellion genre. While I can't know if the black-and-white scenes in 1950's Hungary are portrayed accurately, the Kodachrome sights and sounds of growing up in '50's and '60's suburbia are among the most acutely portrayed I've ever seen in the movies. While my parents weren't the ones with foreign accents--it was my grandmother-- boy do I remember that making me different from the white bread around me. Scarlett Johannsson turns in another stellar performance, as in "Ghost World." This is Natassja Kinski's best role in years, and Tony Goldwyn does fine in the sympathetic paternal role that Aidan Quinn usually does. Even the kid who is "Grace" in TV's "State of Grace" is apt. All this quality helps to overcome the sentiment and nostalgia, and the creator does avoid the didacticism of most heart-warming TV movies on the same subject of reconciliation.A fine PG-13 family movie, though I would have liked to see more of what Gardos said in an interview that in her real life rebellion "I did worse."(originally written 8/11/2001)

This is the definition of a Norfolk Library Film. No ones' heard of it. Now really Norfolk Library does have some films that are popular but they also have tons of films I know or care little about. I got this only 'cuz it had Larisa Oleynik in the credtis. What is she doing there? She has like 2 minutes of screen time. Not that this is anything new to films, but I was hoping to actually hear more than 4 sentences from her. Back to the Film...A family wants to leave Hungary 'cuz it's communist. Great Idea but their youngest girl gets left behind. She eventually gets to LA when she's 6 years old but doesn't like it there. By the time she's 15 she hates everyone in her life and wants to go back to the simple world she left beind. This could be really good for a drama, and I'M SURE the real experience was better than the movie. This film was never sure where it wanted to go, starting in Black and White (ala Schindler's List) then switching to color. 99% of the problems that arise are because the mom never tells her daughter about what made Hungary so bad. When the girl does go back, she finds out any ways. What a waste of a plane ticket. PS: That bridge is cool. It's the same picture as on a "Greater Vision" Album called "Far Beyond This Place"

1st watched 7/25/2004 - out of 10 (Dir-Eva Gardos): Heartfelt story of Hungarian immigrant family's trek to the U.S without their baby and the trials that came after this to reunite the whole family. This is definitely a story written from a point of view that understands all the feelings that came with this situation. I'm curious whether the writer/director 'Eva Gardos' was either one of the ones involved or was very close to the family. I digress, anyway, this is a well-done portrait of these lives and one of the few films that doesn't have a bias towards the Hungarian way of live as opposed to the American way of life. What seems to be most important is a feeling of closure felt by the child which she reaches at the end of the film. When the parents left Hungary, the child became a well-loved foster child and then was stolen by the real grandmother and sent to America to be a part of her real family. The discovery of the child's real upbringing is most important and this is where the story goes from here. Unique slow-moving feature film with an uplifting final message with well-done portrayals from the main characters but some very bad acting from subordinate players that doesn't deter from the story.