Critics reviews

Americans know best how to pick apart the idiosyncrasies of their home, but Kusturica’s observations as a stranger in a strange land give the film’s anti-reality buoyancy a surprising heft.

[I was] enraptured by the film’s heady blend of poignancy, hilarity, and magical realism, not to mention the performances from Faye Dunaway, Jerry Lewis, Johnny Depp, Lili Taylor, and Vincent Gallo... The film captivated me with its weird vision, out-there humor, and emotion.

It takes courage to dream on a big scale, which is what Emir Kusturica does in "Arizona Dream," a wonderfully absurdist comedy... an inspired, erratic goulash that ignores standard movie- making formulas.

A wiggy whatzis of variably engaging loopiness but lingering, mystical darkness... Recalling the ‘70s shaggy-dog stories of Makavejev, Ashby, and Schatzberg, Kusturica’s French-financed American venture deserved better than the neglect it suffered in the blockbuster age.

The film is genuinely funny, oddly surprising and tragically affectionate. The performances are beyond the realm of expectation, grounding the flights of fancy to recognisable patterns of dysfunction. You learn to love these people and, in loving them, share their magical dreams.

It's no less memorable in its own way than [Kusturica's] Balkan masterworks...[and it] has a surreal quality that you accept on its own terms or not at all.

A dazzling, daring slice of cockamamie tragicomic Americana envisioned with magic realism... “Arizona Dream” is a kind of cross between Gus Van Sant and Robert Altman. As determinedly hip as it is, however, it most likely will cut as deep five years from now as it does today.

Working on unfamiliar terrain, without the ballast of Bosnian history that gives such heft to "Underground," Mr. Kusturica meanders along at an obvious disadvantage. Even so, his "Arizona Dream" is enjoyably adrift, a wildly off-the-wall reverie. It's more than a fish out of water.

Every scene in this bizarre fusion of art and stardom is a joy to behold, searing its mark in the memory by blurring the line between real and surreal... The film is overlong and requires its watcher to accept its utter lack of reality, culminating in an uncomfortable anticlimax... All of this, however, is long outlived by the sheer joy of watching and dreaming your way through the rest of the movie.

The first 'American' film by the director of Time of the Gypsies is every bit as bizarre and imaginative as his earlier work, although it's also maddeningly indulgent and erratic... A curate's egg with more than its share of longueurs, but its comically surreal viewpoint is infectious.

This goofy, disturbing piece of magical realism... illustrates the truism that the biggest difference between European and American directors using America as a site for fantasies is that the Europeans are likelier to know what they're doing.

"Arizona Dream" is one of those movies that slips through the cracks. Hollywood bureaucracy has been established precisely to prevent films like this from being made. And yet it was made, and it is goofier than hell - you can't stop watching because nobody in the audience, and possibly nobody on the screen, has any idea what's going to happen next.