I-Am-The-Movie-Addict Being a long admirer of long-forgotten, missed-out, and esp.criterion collections, this film was a big and unexpcted surprise for me. This was not because i was walking a criterion film after a month but because it was sheerly different from what films are and what they use to be.Coming back to this title, "My Dinner with Andre(1981)" this film basically can be described in simple words such as a 2 hour long therapeutic conversation over a dinner between two people who were meeting after a long period of time.Keeping me review short and simple. what really puts you towards admiring the film is the basis of the telling and what it want to convey through simple words and yet iceberg theory kinda exists in those letters. If you are kind a philosophical person who loves to know about their desire of what life is and other related aspects then this film is for you as the actors in the film namely , Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn the main leads creates wonder chemistry and aura that never lets you go away from the film despite sometime your yawning and boriness comes in and tries to delude you away.With this, this film is a clearly no-no to action junkies and normal movies goers as this realm is not meant for them and this film wouldn't go pass your normal kind of entertainment which you'll come looking towards this film.In simple words, do watch it and judge it as your heart will thinking about it.I give a rating of 9/10 stars for being what it is. True. Simple. Real. Unforgettable. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004CURZCA

Dalbert Pringle And, what is 1981's "My Dinner With Andre" all about - You may ask??Well - If you can imagine yourself as a customer at a fancy-schmancy restaurant and you are sitting at a table next to the likes of Boris Karloff and Elmer Fudd who are engaging in a rather loud, half-assed conversation - That should give you a pretty good idea of this film's plot-line.For me - The bulk of the conversation that took place between this film's 2 less-than-dynamic characters was certainly far from being anything coming close to real "meat and potatoes" talk. That's for sure. In fact - I found it to be just "watery soup" rantings and ravings for the most part.After having to endure paying attention to 80 minutes of Andre's incessant babble and kitchen-counter philosophy (while Wallace listened on with the keenest of interest) was (indeed) a real test of my patience.I mean - This particular chin-wag only started to pick up some significant steam in its last 30 minutes. And by that point I was way too bored to care one way or the other about what was being said between the likes of Boris and Elmer here.

JT-Kirk Philosophy, existentialism, transcendentalism all collide over quail dinner. Some may see this movie as a time-suck, when in fact it's not, it's compelling and lets the viewer feel as if he's dining at the next table, listening in on something beyond the normal dinner conversation. There's no question as to how anybody else on the screen or talked about feels, it's simply two men having conversation, and that conversation ends up being exceptionally colorful and deep and full of crap at times, but never boring.For the first quarter, it feels as if Andre's existentialist dilemmas are so farcical and ridiculous that they must be pretense, yet once the infinitely-traveled (both the world and the being) Andre calls his own behavior out as abhorrent, things flip on their ear and get your attention.Wally and Andre agree and disagree on the nature of (then-modern) life within the same breaths, rarely exposing anything other than a friendly listening ear, hardly daring to show conflict as that would be outrageous in a conversation such as this between these two people.Some of what Andre says about the fundamentals of society have been proved prescient when a trip on the bus has the majority of riders interacting only with their phones, never truly communicating or living with those people around them. In that way, it's impossible 33 years later not to view truths in the wild stories being told by a man who may not be as nuts as he seems at times, but definitely has let his enlightenment cloud his ability to actually live his life. Yet time after time, we are faced with the very real possibility that Andre's crisis comes from losing his mother, an event which comes up over and over in tales - or maybe he's right on track, and using that event only as a stinging example of the blind men describing the elephant.Wally meanwhile plays the polite ear for a time, then a sounding board, finally even making counterpoints to a much more "here and now" life, but he never fully gives himself over to fighting his friend's ideas, and he rarely shows a hint that he might be bored or glazing over. The fact that Wally, our "protagonist" - if that's what you can call his role - refuses to disengage with Andre the way so many of their friends have shows a kindness and an ability to truly take in the ideas behind a man seemingly broken and on the fringes of society.I remember overhearing talk like this when I was a kid, some of those conversations were the best ideas and some were the absolute worst dreck. How they were used ended up being where their true value mattered, and this film touches on that, but doesn't force it down the viewer's throat. By the end of the few hours, the viewer is a little exhausted, the voice-over narration bookends feel clumsy, but - despite a lack of answers or anything of that nature - something happened and because of that, the viewer felt. That's where entertainment and art must collide to be successful. Part of me would love to find out how Andre's wife and children, how Wally's girlfriend, how their theater community friends, even how the waitstaff dealt with the repercussions of that conversation, there are a lifetime of ideas that have come and gone since this film was made, a near-total abandonment of the type of "self-examination at all costs" behavior Andre lives by in the film, so in that way the film leaves us with the possibility of going anywhere we want, viewing sequels in our own minds. That's a strong tale told then, a movie that's just two New Yorkers having dinner being so much more without pushing at all.Some audiences, perhaps most, won't be able to take this film in. It is longwinded and "nothing happens", it doesn't even entirely look good at times, but where it succeeds is in engaging far beyond the audience's expectations without anything other than some dinner, conversations, and coffee.

Roland Jakobsson (rolandddd) This is indeed a very odd movie, and the kind of movie you'll rarely come across in cinemas nowadays. The basic plot is that two men, Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, sit down to have a nice meal and discuss some of the issues that are most important in their lives. Topics include the nature of the theatre, the complexities of acting, and life in general. The two men discuss art on a philosophical level, but also the meanings of life itself, drawing from their personal experiences.It asks a lot from you as a viewer, it demands your total attention and you can't really multitask while watching because then you'll quickly be thrown off track. Keeping your attention on the movie has its rewards because the quality of the dialogue is overall very high.Personally though I found the movie a bit uneven. The parts I found most interesting are those where they discuss their lives and their general reflections on it, and when they have differing opinions. The first part of the movie was a bit dull as it is completely dominated by Gregory talking about experimental theatre in a way that borders on rambling, and I was happy to see Wallace get a bit more attention later on. Certainly not a movie for a Friday with popcorn, but if you are interested in the nature of art itself and the theatre in particular you will find this movie rewarding.