Cast of Lula, the Son of Brazil
Juliana Baroni Marisa Letícia Antônio Pitanga Seu Cristóvão Celso Frateschi Seu Álvaro Marcos Cesana Cláudio Feitosa Felipe Falanga Lula (7 anos) Guillerme Tortólio Lula (15 anos) Luccas Papp Lambari (15 anos) Vanessa Bizzarro Lurdes (13 anos) Fernando Alves Pinto Jornalista Rayana Carvalho Dona Mocinha Pascoal da Conceição Radialista
Lula, the Son of Brazil Reviews
New York Post V.A. Musetto
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. Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
Lula, Son of Brazil is proof that even charismatic political figures, in this case, Brazil's former president, Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, can be felled by the requirements of the standard biopic genre. Los Angeles Times Sheri Linden
Glossing over such inconvenient facts as out-of-wedlock fatherhood, this unabashed encomium skimps on complexity and insight in the name of veneration. New York Times Stephen Holden
A conventional, rather shallow up-by-your-bootstraps drama, but with a difference. From the Front Row Mattie Lucas
For a film that clearly loves its subject so much, it's lack of fire is both curious and unfortunate. Well-acted and mildly engaging, but too much melodrama and not enough compelling insight. Film-Forward.com Kent Turner
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 Spirituality & Practice Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
A biopicture about the formative early years of one of Brazil's most famous presidents whose muse and advocate was his beloved mother. Monsters and Critics Ron Wilkinson
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. Slant Magazine Fernando F. Croce
This insipidly inspirational biopic of the two-term Brazilian president is a safe, bourgeois vision of proletarian struggle. 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. Village Voice Melissa Anderson
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. Hollywood Reporter Stephen Farber
Barreto's direction doesn't avoid the flatness of many TV biographies, and the film drags on too long to captivate audiences who do not revere Lula as their national hero. Battleship Pretension Jack Fleischer
Responsible world citizens should probably know the story of Lula, but when it comes down to it, it doesn't feel like Lula ever truly gives us insight into Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Battleship Pretension David Bax
Essentially, what Barreto engages in here is mythmaking. Easy Reader (California) Neely Swanson
One can only hope that this isn't the best that Brazil has to offer cinematically. rec.arts.movies.reviews Louis Proyect
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. ReelTalk Movie Reviews Donald J. Levit
Only half-way through, the film loses momentum. Emotion gives way to stagey conventional pseudo-populism, with the human disappeared.
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