the leading man is my tpye

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This movie gave me a big laugh from the first half of the story, then turned out to be a serious and heartbreaking historical drama towards the end. Elijah Wood, who played an Jewish American man with a OCD-like compulsion, did a great job. His road trip fellow, Alex (played by Eugene Hutz) is wonderful in portraying a hip-hop-loving Ukrainian guy who speaks English with a funny accent. I loved how he translates in English with a sprinkle of jokes and sarcasm towards Americans. I think the screenwriter did some research to create unique English sentences which often happens when non-English speakers speak English.A young American guy named Jonathan, played by Elijah Wood, is a collector who always brings small plastic bags to collect anything whenever he finds things that are meaningful. With a pendant he collected when his grandfather died and a picture when his grandmother dies, he flies to Ukraine to find the root of his family and a Ukrainian village. He hires Odessa Heritage Tour, run by an old Ukrainian man Alexander (Oleksandr Choroshko) who claims he is blind (but is not). Along with his English-speaking grandson, Alex (played by Eugene Hutz) and Alexander's clinging guided dog, a strange road trip starts. While looking for a Ukrainian village called Trachimbrod, Alexander's old memory comes back which helps Jonathan find a historical background hidden in the picture and the relationship between his grandfather and grandmother.The story has a little puzzle that took me time to resolve, such as where Jonathan's grandmother met his grandfather, where his grandmother died, how grandmother's sister kept the grandmother's ring, etc. While the story depicts a cruel history around the Nazi's conquest in Ukraine and how his grandfather survived his life, the tone of the story is somehow poetic and aesthetic which makes the film impressive. When Augustine's sister was told that the war was over, everything was solved as if a tangled thread got loosen, and Jonathan's investigation put an end to the story and so did Alexander's. The movie also tells that one cannot choose a place to be born, so you could be someone else in another country.I marked this movie in my watchlist in 2005, and finally had the mood and time to watch it. I feel time passed so quickly.

My friend recommended me to watch this movie. And it was a complete disappointment for me. I am half Jew and half Ukrainian, so I can judge it from both points of view. First, it is not a comedy at all, since it is not funny. Second, the movie is full of oxymoron and ridiculous things. For example, the constant usage of word 'jid', which is a swearword in Russian, in general. But most of all... Trabant!!! It is not a popular car in the former Soviet Union, it is even not rare, it is simply nonexistent. During my childhood in the USSR I even have not heard about such a car! It may be used as a symbol of GDR, but certainly not of the USSR or Ukraine. The most interesting thing is that the director and the most actors are Russians/Ukrainians (maybe former). So they probably should have noted all these inconsistencies. And third, the Elijah Wood's play is simply weak and not convincing.

Some criticism in these pages have expressed opinions about the accuracy of the story, which after all, it's a work of fiction and liberties have been taken. It would have been impossible to make another film including so much that is contained in the book. The great way the film is divided into different chapters is a clever way to let the viewer know what's about to be seen.Elijah Wood, a magnificent film actor, does an excellent work by underplaying Jonathan. Mr. Wood makes one of his best appearances in any film with his interpretation of the main character. The felicitous casting of Eugene Hutz as Alex, the Ukranian tour assistant and translator, seems to be an idea made in heaven. Mr. Hutz is about the best thing in the film. His arcane usage of English gives the film a funny angle that delights the viewer. Boris Leskin as Alex's grandfather and driver of the tour car makes a valuable contribution to the film, as well as Laryssa Lauret, who is seen in the last part of the movie.The excellent cinematography of Matthew Libatique brings the splendor of the Czech Republic's countryside in all its magnificence. The musical score by Paul Cantelon is heard in the background adorning the film in ways that it adds a richness to the movie.Above all, this is a triumph for Liev Schreiber, the first time director that will surely go far in whatever he decides to do next.

"Everything is Illuminated" is an embarrassingly bad stinker on almost every count, with two exceptions: Eugene Hutz is weirdly, wildly charismatic as Alex, a goofy young Ukrainian who imagines himself a hip-hop star. And "Everything Is Illuminated"'s score is excellent, consisting, as it does, of authentic Eastern European folk music.The first half of "Everything Is Illuminated" consists of g-rated versions of "Borat" jokes. Ukrainians are funny because they try to be cool like Americans. Ukrainians are laughable because they speak English in a simple-minded pidgin, calling "African Americans" "Negroes," for example, and saying "repose" for "sleep." Ukrainians are funny because of their sex lives. Ukrainians are also dirty, irrationally and by nature violent, they hate Jews, they wear unattractive clothing; the men are ready to beat up any newcomer to their town naïve enough to ask for driving directions; the women are either cowed housewives married to husbands and fathers who lead with their fists, or slatternly, sullen, obese waitresses; goat-herding Ukrainian children engage in mindless vandalism like flattening car tires. These folks are so debased that even their dogs are ugly, stupid, and vicious. Yup, there's even a creepy household pet. Of course these comically stupid, ugly, crude yokels are responsible for the Holocaust. At one point, Elijah Wood, as Jonathan Safran Foer, insists that the Ukraine was as bad as Nazi Germany.This nasty stereotype is not the invention of Liev Schreiber, the director and script writer. Schreiber and Safran Foer, the author of the book on which the film is based, are merely exploiting, not inventing, hateful ethnic stereotypes. The image of the brutal Eastern European peasant has been around for centuries. Americans are most familiar with this stereotype from Polak jokes and the film "Borat." Eugene Hutz is genuinely funny in his thankless, Eastern European "Amos-and-Andy"-style role. He acts the Ukrainian dunce with as much grace and dignity as possible, and is the only thing worth watching in the film. Some scenes are laugh out loud funny, especially when Wood lectures Hutz on the use of the term "African American." But "Amos and Andy" was funny, too.After about an hour of Bohunk jokes, "Everything Is Illuminated" abruptly turns off the comedy tap and turns into a turgid, static Holocaust film. What little action there was in the film, provided by Hutz's kinetic mugging, shuffling, and jiving, or by Ukrainians punching other Ukrainians, stops. Characters stand still and offer speeches about horrible things that happened in the past. Jonathan and Alex arrive at the one pleasant house, with the one dignified resident, in all of Ukraine. The colorful cottage is out of a Disney fairy tale. Clean laundry snaps on the line. Orderly rows of sunflowers surround the home. The peasant woman living in the cottage is gracious and lovely. Aha. She's not really Ukrainian. She's Jewish.On the other hand, Elijah Wood, as Jonathan Safran Foer, a modern American Jew, comes off no better than the stereotyped Ukrainians. He, too, is a stereotype: the uptight, obsessional, neurotic, socially backward, weak, frightened, passive Jew. Wood, as Jonathan, is so stiff he could be playing a corpse. A writer and director should have a very sound aesthetic reason for making the Jewish character in a film about the Holocaust a passive Jew. Scheiber has no good reason. He's just playing two stereotypes against each other, insisting that one needn't learn anything from one of the most horrendous crimes in history in order to make a film about it. Given that there is a very self-destructive death of another Jewish character in the movie, Wood's passivity is even more troubling.The Holocaust is never honored by "Everything Is Illuminated." In the unlikely event that this is the only Holocaust film the viewer ever sees, that viewer would have no idea what the Holocaust was. As slow, pretentious, and ponderous as this film is, it never for one moment manages to convey the monumental horror and heartbreak of the Holocaust.Again, I'd love to see Eugene Hutz in just about any new film; meanwhile, I've been watching youtube videos of his band, "Gogol Bordello." Hutz sings and dances like a man who has vowed to live fast, play hard, die young, and leave a good looking corpse.