33
The Farewell Party leaves no doubt as to where it stands on the right to die with dignity when facing terminal illness, but it’s so clumsily made that it serves only to exasperate.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
[Depicts] the end of life not as an isolated horror (as in Michael Haneke's Amour) or as the contested site of legal and political factions, but as a complex social phase, its wobbly moral scale hinging on empathy.
70
The film’s deft, improbable balance of tone makes its success feel well-deserved. Not many directors could have pulled off the blend of somber reflection and gallows humor that Tal Granit and Sharon Maymon manage here.
75
Slant Magazine by Elise Nakhnikian
A neatly balanced tragicomedy about the easily blurred line between assisted living and assisted death.
90
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
The Farewell Party succeeds as well as it does because the core dilemma always feels real and the filmmakers take great care to see that the inevitable emotions put into play are never overdone.
88
RogerEbert.com by Odie Henderson
There’s an infectious joy to how the actors handle the morbid humor here, and it is never mean-spirited.
90
Arizona Republic by Randy Cordova
It actually is quite funny. It is also warm and empathetic, though a viewer's reaction to the film might vary depending how they view the subject of assisted suicide.
75
The performers, working in Hebrew (with English subtitles), make their characters empathetic, emphatic, human and humane.
63
Washington Post by Stephanie Merry
Despite its missteps, The Farewell Party feels special in the way it covers the Big Stuff — love, death, friendship, family — without losing its playful streak.
60
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
For all its sensitivity to the subject, The Farewell Party makes a number of tonal missteps of which the most glaring is the insertion of a musical number that upsets the movie’s otherwise sensible balance between the comedic and the morbid.