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Created Feb 16, 2008 11:57PM PST • Edited Oct 27, 2018 09:18PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Relaxed and delightfully deadpan, with several LOL moments, The Band’s Visit works as a perfectly pleasant comedy and as a signpost for how Israelis and Arabs can live together as neighbors. The movie uses a classic fish-out-of-water situation to achieve more than a few moments of inspired comic lunacy. Non-political, the movie can’t help but make a political statement, here that mundane coexistence can occur between Jew and Muslim. Largely a fantasy today, someday perhaps it will be widely shared on both sides.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Extremely well performed by a core cast of Israeli and Palestinian actors whose seriousness draws the comedy out of the essentially ridiculous situations in which their characters find themselves, a la De Niro in Analyze This.

   Ronit Elkabetz is terrific as the no-longer-young cafe owner who nonetheless has maintained a healthy zest for life. Sasson Gabai instills deep humanity into his Egyptian officer’s martinet-like character. Saleh Bakri, a Palestinian actor making his first film appearance, displays leading man charisma as a young trumpeter looking for a good time.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Eran Kolirin has written and directed a terrific movie in The Band’s Visit. More than just terrific Israeli or Middle Eastern cinema, this movie easily works across cultural borders.

11. Direction Great 4.0

    I know funny, and this movie is damn funny.

12. Play Perfect 5.0

    Terrific concept and script by auteur Eran Kolirin. Placing formal Egyptian military officers – always dragging their roller-board suitcases, the quintessential modern accoutrement – in a dusty outpost of a relentlessly informal Israel makes for high comedy.

    Several scenes are really, really funny, none more inspired than a stage managed seduction at the roller rink (more about this in the Sex commentary below).

13. Music Great 4.0

    Chet Baker ultimately brings the parties together, showing yet again the indispensable role that America plays in the Middle East. ;-)

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    The flat, dusty and architecturally dreary landscape perfectly captures the early socialist development of the State of Israel.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Tame 1.3

    This movie contains perhaps the funniest seduction scene in years, when a debonair Egyptian serves as Cyrano de Bergerac for a young Israeli guy and his long suffering date. The fact that the scene ends with just a sweet kiss makes it a movie classic of the old school variety.

17. Sex Titillating 1.6

18. Violence Gentle 1.0

    Blessedly none.

19. Rudeness Polite 1.3

21. Reality

    Glib 1.3

    Would an Egyptian Army band come to Israel for a concert? I don’t know, but assume not. So the movie is glib not only with its comic set-ups, but with its fantasy of prosaic neighborliness.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.8

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0