Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer

It's a giddy nightmare. Nothing is quite what it seems in I Served the King of England, and this is poetically appropriate. The world it depicts is too dangerous and too lovely to classify.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

This is a dark story as well as a frothy one. But the bubble of absurdist self-absorption in which Menzel places this specimen of man-child is exquisite.

Village Voice

A mischievously hedonistic, Chaplinesque farce, the film buoyantly but seriously traverses the horrors of World War II with a subtlety and sophistication that most American comedies cannot grasp.

The Hollywood Reporter by Ray Bennett

It is a sumptuously told tale of childlike wonder in the face of darkest corruption and war, mixing high comedy, surreal sequences and genuine drama viewed from a wise, jaundiced perspective.

Village Voice by Aaron Hillis

A mischievously hedonistic, Chaplinesque farce, the film buoyantly but seriously traverses the horrors of World War II with a subtlety and sophistication that most American comedies cannot grasp.

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

If this actually were 1968, the pipe-smoking sophisticates of "Esquire" and "Playboy" would be proclaiming I Served the King of England a nettlesome masterpiece. For whatever good it does this film today, I'll stick my pipe in my mug and agree.

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

I Served The King Of England views diabolical events from the sidelines, something like "The Remains Of The Day" reworked as an absurdist comedy.

New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman

A film as unique as this is a gift that shouldn't be ignored.

Variety by Eddie Cockrell

A virtual primer on the unique mixture of self-deprecating dark humor and personal tragedy that has been the Czech cinema's stock-in-trade since their celebrated 1960s New Wave.

Wall Street Journal by Joe Morgenstern

The movie's main appeal is its special comic flavor -- a zesty fusion of picaresque adventure, absurdist whimsy and Chaplinesque grace.

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

Charming to the max.

Time by Richard Schickel

May not be a totally riveting movie, but it is, in its gently insinuating way, a curiously rewarding one.

The New York Times by Stephen Holden

The performance of Mr. Barnev, who has the poker face and agility of a silent clown, defines the style of a film whose timing and physical comedy look back to 1920s slapstick.

The New Yorker by David Denby

Menzel strings his sequences together with great affection and skill, but the movie, an absurdist picaresque, doesn't have much cumulative impact, and perhaps the hero is too much a lightweight to hold an epic together.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein

Menzel’s touch is sprightly, lyrical, mischievously understated.

Los Angeles Times by Kevin Thomas

The new film is so leisurely paced and overly long that what means to be at once charming yet darkly satirical lapses into tedium and barely comes alive.