Lula, the Son of Brazil (2012)

Critic Reviews

• Sheri Linden, Los Angeles Times

  Glossing over such inconvenient facts as out-of-wedlock fatherhood, this unabashed encomium skimps on complexity and insight in the name of veneration.

• Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor

  Lula, Son of Brazil is proof that even charismatic political figures, in this case, Brazil's former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, can be felled by the requirements of the standard biopic genre.

• V.A. Musetto, New York Post

  With its $5 million budget, "Lula'' is said to be Brazil's most expensive movie yet. It's a shame the money wasn't better spent.

• Ella Taylor, NPR

  Long on hero worship and woefully short on insight, Lula: Son of Brazil oozes good intentions, but it wouldn't look out of place in a retrospective of early Soviet workerist cinema.

• Stephen Holden, New York Times

  A conventional, rather shallow up-by-your-bootstraps drama, but with a difference.

• Melissa Anderson, Village Voice

  Forget Son of Brazil: This syrupy origin story/biopic on the nation's beloved reformist president, whose second term ended in 2010, should be titled Mama's Boy.

• Avi Offer, NYC Movie Guru

  Well-acted and mildly engaging, but too much melodrama and not enough compelling insight.

• Ron Wilkinson, Monsters and Critics

  For most persons outside of Brazil, this will be a historically significant film with enough excitement to fill almost every minute of the 130-minute run time.

• Louis Proyect, rec.arts.movies.reviews

  A resolutely apolitical biopic inspired more by "Coal Miner's Daughter" than the class struggle in Brazil. Despite this, it is still worth seeing for its commitment to the cause of the 99% in Brazil.

• Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice

  A biopicture about the formative early years of one of Brazil's most famous presidents whose muse and advocate was his beloved mother.

• Donald J. Levit, ReelTalk Movie Reviews

  Only half-way through, the film loses momentum. Emotion gives way to stagey conventional pseudo-populism, with the human disappeared.

• Kent Turner, Film-Forward.com

  But da Silva comes across as such a nice and sensible guy that you're likely to crave the ego-driven rants or the paranoia running rampant in other political biopics

• David Fear, Time Out New York

  You're mostly left with facts, dates and iconic poses.

• Fernando F. Croce, Slant Magazine

  This insipidly inspirational biopic of the two-term Brazilian president is a safe, bourgeois vision of proletarian struggle.

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