The story regurgitates the usual trappings of underdog tales, milking stereotypes as well as tear ducts.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
So it's the story of a down-and-out bigwig vindicating himself by revising his crowning cultural moment. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
How much control are you willing to cede when you see a movie? Because director Radu Mihaileanu is fiercely determined to manipulate your every emotion.
Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas
Moves from rowdy, broad comedy to shameless heart-tugging, but Romanian writer-director Radu Mihaileanu keeps this French production flowing buoyantly, skittering past all manner of improbabilities.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
The crowd-pleasing comic Euro-drama The Concert is, at its musical center, as full of ripe emotion as Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major. It's also as darkly funny as a Slavic farce, a composition of sweet cacophony.
Village Voice by Melissa Anderson
Beyond fans of Mélanie Laurent--who furiously fingers a fiddle and wears flashback wigs--The Concert may appeal to those who delight in stereotypes.
A pleasant dramatic caper that wears out its welcome, The Concert is the houseguest who sings a little too loudly and too long for his supper, tone deaf to the line between charm and imposition.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
The harder this desperately obsequious circus of a movie tries to entertain, the more it falls short.
Boxoffice Magazine by Wade Major
Fans of "Train of Life" will undoubtedly embrace the picture's similarly ragtag collection of clever, lovable misfits.