Home | Movies By Year | Movies from 2003
All the Real Girls
Buy All the Real Girls now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the movie. And once you've experienced the movie, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'All the Real Girls' is a 2003 American romantic drama film written and directed by David Gordon Green and starring Paul Schneider, Zooey Deschanel, Shea Whigham and Patricia Clarkson. It is about the romance between a young, small-town womanizer and his best friends sexually inexperienced younger sister. The film was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2003. While the film fared poorly at the box office, it was generally well received by critics and was nominated for several awards when it was shown at film festivals.
Plot
Paul is a young womanizer living in a small Southern town, where he earns a living fixing cars for his uncle. Paul still lives with his mother, Elvira, who works as a clown cheering up children at the local hospital. He spends most of his time hanging out with his best friend and self-proclaimed partner-in-crime, Tip, and their friends Bo and Bust-Ass. Among his friends, Paul has a reputation as a ladies' man, but he is not at all known for being involved with long-term relationships; most of Paul's romances last only a few weeks, and he's slept with nearly every girl in town. Paul is beginning to reach a point where he would like to lead a different life, and that feeling becomes all the more clear when he meets Noel, Tip's teenage sister who returns home after attending a boarding school. Noel is more thoughtful and mature than the girls Paul is used to. Paul and Noel soon fall in love, but for Paul this is a different sort of relationship than he's accustomed to Noel is still a virgin, and her contemplative nature gives him a desire to be a better, stronger person, but Tip does not approve of Paul dating his younger sister, which leads to a rift between these longtime friends.
Cast
Reception
Box office
'All the Real Girls' was a financial failure at the box office. The film was released on February 14, 2003 and played in six theaters, bringing in $39,714 in its opening weekend. By the time it ended its theatrical run on July 10, 2003, it had made back $549,666 of its $2,500,000 budget.
Critical response
The film received positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 71%, based on 115 reviews. The site's consensus states, "Has enough honest moments to warrant a look." On Metacritic it has a score of 71 out of 100, based on 36 reviews.Roger Ebert of the 'Chicago Sun Times' said Green is 27, old enough to be jaded, but he has the soul of a romantic poet. Wordsworth, after all, was 36 when he published, The Rainbow comes and goes and lovely as the Rose. How many guys that age would have that kind of nerve today? He gave the film a four out of four star rating.
Awards and nominations
The film was nominated for awards at several different film festivals globally. Green was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and ended up winning the Special Jury Prize as did Patricia Clarkson for Outstanding Performance. Zooey Deschanel was nominated for Best Female Lead at the 2004 Independent Spirit Awards and Best Actress at the 2004 Mar del Plata Film Festival.
References
Buy All the Real Girls now from Amazon
<-- Return to movies from 2003