aleena_m

I remember having seen the trailer for this movie when it came out last year, just before Christmas. It made it look like a quite decent comedy. I admit, I'm not into this genre at all, but a cousin of mine spoke very warmly of it, so I decided to see it. It was boring 90 % of the time. I probably laughed once and smiled other two times... Maybe seeing it into a theater makes a difference, but at home we all felt like we wanted our time back! The actors were quite good, but I guess they weren't working with good material. There was a lot of singing and the Christmas songs weren't bad and they were even very well performed, but I wasn't planning to watch a musical! The story is nothing special and neither are the jokes. I wouldn't recommend it to any of my friends!

Before deciding if I want to see a movie or not, I usually do 2 things: I check out the IMDb vote and I see the trailer. To tell you the truth I did this quite a long time ago for this one, so I looked at the vote again before hitting the play button. You can imagine that my expectations were quite low: a 5.2 out of 10 isn't that much and the 3 reviews out there were so critical. I decided to see it anyway imagining that I will at least have a different experience given that the movies I normally watch are Hollywood productions. I must say I actually enjoyed it! I took it as a comedy, not as a documentary! I saw people were complaining about the fact that the situations were highly unlikely or that the movie was inspired from a book and it didn't do it justice. Well movies rarely succeed in doing that as far as I know... Books and movies are 2 distinct experiences! I liked the fact that there was little or no vulgarity and a complete lack of fart/bodily fluids/coarse sex jokes that I see too often! I don't find those funny! It's way more difficult to make people laugh because of funny circumstances or truly intelligent or sarcastic lines! To wrap it up without giving anything away, take it as a light-hearted comedy and don't have too high expectations - you might actually enjoy it ;)

Spare yourself the trouble of even renting it, because you would want those 100 minutes of your life back! I've rarely seen such a poor acting and a comedy less funny than this one! I suppose that the people who rated it badly (fair thing) decided not to write a review because it would have meant to waste other time on it! I had to see it yesterday when I visited some friends of mine and we chose it because of the genre and the famous people who were in it. But Simona Ventura is no actress, Elisabetta Canalis only shows off her body, I Fichi d'India and Teresa Mannino who were supposed to be funny weren't... I never liked Massimo Boldi, so I can't be unbiased when it comes to him, but I guess he's always done 3rd grade humor so...

Zobar steals horses to make a living. Just like most of the members of his ethnic group, he doesn't have a lasting job in a precise place, he goes around searching for targets, then steals the horses and sales them to a local wealthy man. During one of these actions he and his fellows are surrounded by the local police and Zobar gets hurt in the chase. After escaping his followers, he is saved by a beautiful witch who heals his wound. He instantly falls in-love with her, but she vanishes from his sight. He returns to his lover, a beautiful blonde woman who's not a gypsy. In the meanwhile we see a local noble man who desperately seeks the attention of Radda, the beautiful witch, but just gets mocked by her. Zobar gets imprisoned after his father betrays him when under the menace that the policemen would shoot the horses of his "satra". He manages to escape just before being hung, but the friend who helps him in doing so gets killed in the chase. By now you would think that the two (Zobar and Radda) are destined to be together and everything works out to help them accomplish their destiny. They finally meet and spend romantic moments together, vowing to love one another. The morning after he proposes to her in front of all the members of her group, but she refuses him saying that she won't accept unless he bents on his knees and kisses her right hand. Instead of doing so the proud Zobar stabs her in the heart and gets himself killed by Radda's father. The whole "satra" gathers around the two lovers and mourns them. The most surprising moment of the movie, at least in my opinion, was the ending. We are far too used to sweet Hollywood endings, so it was quite disturbing, but at least it was different;) Otherwise I think it beautifully pictured the customs and way of life of the gypsies in that period (and things haven't changed a lot in this sense). As for the actors, someone here said that they were all Russians. Yes, it's true, when the movie was made they were all born in the Soviet Union, but you must admit that some names here couldn't be more typically Romanian: G. Ciubotaru, Dumitru Mocanu, even the leads Grigore Grigoriu and Svetlana (tipically Russian name) Toma (Romanian). There's a simple explanation for that: they were born in what is now The Moldavian Republic, so it's easy to understand why their names sound Romanian:) However, they all did a good job. Sometimes the intensity of the glances between the actors spoke much more than words would have done. Furthermore Radda's glance looked hypnotic more than once as she was a witch and managed to predict the future and had a special relationship with animals. I'm afraid I can't be objective enough to vote this movie as it isn't at all the kind of film that I normally watch... I actually prefer action-thriller-mystery ones and yesterday I watched it because my mother wanted to see it:p However, for someone who is interested in the life of the traveling gypsies in the early XXth century and in their typical music and dancing, this is really good!

As another comment here pointed it out, this movie has lots in common with "Coyote Ugly". But it also reminded me of "Save the Last Dance", as the main character played there also auditioned for a famous dance school performing a dance routine that mixed classic ballet moves with modern hip hop ones. Also in both movies the main characters have lost their mothers (both of whom, if I remember this correctly 'cause it's been a while since I saw "Save the Last Dance", are dead). I actually looked rapidly at a couple of comments before deciding whether to watch "Make It Happen" or not after seeing the trailer, so I knew what to expect and I wasn't disappointed - that is because they updated the music, changed a little the location and the style, but all in all re-proposed two stories that had already been successful in the past (so we could consider it some sort of remake). From this point of view it wasn't that bad:P

I have 2 brothers, both younger than me. One of them told me that this was a great movie, the other said the exact opposite. I didn't know what to believe, so I decided that I should watch it in order to have an opinion of my own. I didn't know what exactly to expect, but I was really surprised when I realized how may ethical issues this movie arose. It made me ask myself a couple of truly interesting questions. It also reminded me that some people actually enjoy playing God as one of the characters of the movie does. We should always know exactly what our choices imply and be responsible about it. As for the film itself, I found it exciting to watch, mostly surprising (I hate predictable movies:))) and, as another IMDb user mentioned, I liked the fact that physical violence and sex scenes were limited, which made it easy to watch with all the family. The acting was great and the pace was right. Watch it:)!

Probably in its genre, it's good movie, but in my opinion it was way too vulgar. Actually I thought that most of the jokes were stupid and, of course, lots of them had a sexual background. Maybe I got that feeling because I happened to watch it with my mom, I'm not sure. Maybe the fact that I'm a Christian disturbed me too much when it came to the Vatican and the way the movie mocked the Pope. Maybe I found it an insult to see 2 teenagers having sex for the first time in a confessional. However, I repeat, I'm not into this type of movie and you may not find my comment very useful if you think that "American Pie" is a funny film.