Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Critic Reviews

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a rueful comedy about two young American women who savor many Continental delicacies.

Slight, disposable but entertaining. Vicky Cristina Barcelona is an awful lot better than anything in his thankfully short "British" period.

As exhilarating, captivating and enjoyable as a summer romance in an exotic city.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is fitfully good.

A bittersweet meditation on art and passion and on love in its many guises.

A movie brimming with beautiful people and beautiful scenery; there's a contagious enthusiasm as this movie whirs through the sights and sounds of Barcelona.

After Vicky Cristina Barcelona, you may feel you've learned something about the world. How lasting those epiphanies are depends on your constitution. But you don't have to go native to enjoy the trip.

Given its particulars, Vicky Cristina Barcelona ought to have been an eye-roller. What a surprise that it's so seductive.

Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona has a natural, flowing vitality to it, a sun-drenched splendor that never falters.

He is a little like Eric Rohmer here. The actors are attractive, the city is magnificent, the love scenes don't get all sweaty, and everybody finishes the summer a little wiser and with a lifetime of memories. What more could you ask?

When it's over, and the two Americans at the heart of the story depart Barcelona in overlapping states of confusion, you're left with a tinge of melancholy that feels not plot-driven, not engineered, but like a slice of reasonably complicated life.

Watching Allen fart out a story when he has no characters is always painful.

While the territory is familiar, the terrain is new: Allen shoots his title city with an eye for its art and architecture.

If Woody Allen's heart still belongs to New York City, he's had a thrilling, invigorating fling with northeastern Spain.

Rich, complex, funny, erotic, compassionate and thoughtful, Vicky Cristina Barcelona may be the most fully realized film Woody Allen has made in two decades.

It all begins to feel veddy, veddy pretentious and a very, very long way from the Brooklyn or Manhattan that he actually understands.

The magnificent acting ensemble alone is worth the price of admission.

A sexy, funny divertissement that passes as enjoyably as an idle summer's afternoon in the titular Spanish city.

[Allen's] funniest movie in years and arguably his sexiest.

Likable, beautifully acted, scenic and sexy.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a comedy, a good one, and also one of Allen's best-ever meditations on the many entanglements of love.

The performances are all wonderful, but top honors go to the amazing Penelope Cruz.