Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

I loved it in the theater when it came out and just saw it again on dvd: still a great movie! People who rate this below 5 lack the patience and insight to watch such a good piece of art. I pity them for they miss a lot in life.

It never fails to amaze just how easily people are seduced into liking foolish works - mostly, simply because they look good! Stylish visuals, sets, effective wardrobe decoration, slick direction, don't always add up to a good movie. Perfume has all these attributes but is built around a mind-numbingly worthless story. Just think about this...a baby is born in an 18th-century street produce market, to a woman working on a fish stall to be exact. She's cutting off fish heads and throwing them onto the ground, then she almost vomits, at the same time she drops a baby (gives birth) onto this putrid floor. There lies the new born on the floor covered in absolute filth, with maggots crawling all around it. She intends to dump it along with the other rubbish but a customer happens to see it – so, she is hung for her crime – good riddance to this pitiful wretch.Now, this babe as it turns out grows up in a work house but seems to have the world's first supersonic nose, capable of picking up the slightest scents many, many, miles away (counties in fact!) - as if that premise alone isn't enough to put you off. He follows a young girl home to smell her but accidentally kills her in the attempt. He dumps the body but is now hooked on the odour of women. He then gets a job in a French perfume shop and sets about killing as many beautiful women as he can find (seems they smell better than 'ordinary' girls). Putting their bodies into huge glass vats filled with flower petals, he siphons off the juices as they decompose (a decomposing body that somehow smells like an irresistible sweet perfume!) Who writes this tosh? His murders escalate sending the town into a chaos of fear - is no woman safe from becoming a mere decomposing scent! Alan Rickman plays a father trying to protect his daughter – he tries to play it straight but looks all the while like he knows this script is on the nose. The murderous schnozzle is finally caught and sentenced to a public death in the town square but, he has a bottle of his best perfume in his coat pocket and with a wave of his handkerchief sends the entire population into a frenzy of copulation - thus turning attention from himself! Next, he douses himself with his irresistible decomposing female scent - which further so enamours the town folk that they eat him alive! This stinker is played for real and to the tune of 60 million Dollars – It's too self consciously serious to be good satire and too straight to work as horror. Who are these fools that will spend huge sums on junk like this? This is somewhat typical of many other international co-productions.The movie made money in Germany (sort of figures) and they wondered if the Americans would understand it. Seems the Americans not only understood but, could smell a rat and stayed away to protect their health. So, the movie fell afoul and languished on the trash heap. Bravo America! Preposterous over-everything simpleton fare masquerading as 'art'. But, managed to fool a few on the way. Critic A.O.Scott of the N.Y.T. (along with a couple of others) at least had the courage to sum it up perfectly. Now to get the stench out of my head.Footnote: Several IMDb reviewers do well with analyzing this but, maybe Mathew-Lolomgwtf (around the bottom of page 2 or so) nails it well enough to save you wasting any of your valuable time.

This movie, surely, isn't for everyone, but if you like it you will probably find a gem in this movie.It tells us the story of Jean Baptiste Grenouille, a boy who is born with an overdeveloped sense of smell and he wants to find the way to make all this different scents he smells to remain. The story is so great, told in an awesome way, and for me it was very original, something that you don't get to see that much these days. Because it's a story about perfumes, scents and smells, the movie had the difficult task to transmit that to us without having the possibility of the smells in a movie theater or in your house, but the director (Tom Tykwer) was able to recreate this world of smells in a very unique way. Although there were some parts that did not make much sense (why does he suddenly decides to live in the mountains? This is not really well explained) but they don't affect that much to the story development.Ben Wishaw shines here as Grenouille providing a performance with not many lines of dialogue but that transmits a lot with his movements and face gestures. He has that bit of innocence but also you see the madness he ends up with. Also Alan Rickman, who does not appear until the middle of the movie or so, provides a very powerful performance as the main antagonist, Richi the father of Laura, one of the possible future victims of Grenouille. The one I felt was a bit overdone was Dustin Hoffman who wasn't at the height of a perfume maker of Paris.The visuals in this movie were very stunning, with many powerful scenes (like the Final Perfume Scene, when Grenouille meets Laura or many more) that capture this aggressive, dark and gritty world but without needing violence or explosions , like in modern blockbusters, just keeping the tension and taking you to the world of scents in a wonderful way. And for that, the director had the help of himself, Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek to create a magnificent score that almost provides this "smell" that you cannot introduce in a movie with very beautiful and also very creepy melodies.I recommend you to watch this movie and after that you will see if you liked it or not but for me was a wonderful experience and I surely recommend it to everyone.

Previously I have read this book. I have also watched the movie yesterday and approximately this is the 25th times watching for me. And I must have to say, every-time I liked it. It was like as the book. At-least they tried to make it happens.One thing, it is very tough to visualize smells and in the movie, it was very realistic to watch. But for me, it was expressed pretty well. Even you can not smell the things, you can imagine how they smell which may be due to the cinematic work, which was amazing. The actors also did a really good part and obviously very lively, which was important. Everything, everyone who acts here, are very much lively.So, all in all I have to say, I think that it is a really interesting movie. And for me, this is one of the best "Can be repeatedly watchable" movie. Thanks Perfume.