The Talent Given Us
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DVD Details
- Rated: Unrated
- Run Time: 1 hours, 37 minutes
- Video: Color
- Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
- Released: July 11, 2006
- Originally Released: 2004
- Label: Virgil Films
Performers, Cast and Crew:
Starring | Allen Wagner, Emily Wagner, Judy Wagner & Maggie Wagner | |
Performer: | Andrew Wagner, Judy Dixon & Billy Wirth | |
Directed by | Andrew Wagner | |
Screenwriting by | Andrew Wagner | |
Director of Photography: | Andrew Wagner |
Entertainment Reviews:
Faux documentary, home movie or unexpurgated family therapy? The Talent Given Us, a funny, surprising ride with a mercurial New York clan, is all three.
Full Review
Time Out
Rating: B+ --
The unwashed talent and originality of "The Talent Given Us" makes it a compelling and fascinating film.
Full Review
Reeling Reviews
The notion that there is no escape from one's family is elevated-and ameliorated-by the inkling that the Wagners' story is, in fact, real.
New Yorker
Rating: B+ --
[A] one-of-a-kind movie that sends the family road-trip genre happily spinning into these self-obsessed, overanalytical times; it's National Lampoon's Vacation as re-imagined by Dr. Phil.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Andrew Wagner's deeply original, awe-inspiring The Talent Given Us defies classification, another mongrel marvel traducing the boundaries of documentary and fiction.
Full Review
Newcity
Rating: 3/4 --
The result is a funny and sometimes touching docu-comedy, sort of like watching your parents if they were in the middle of a Woody Allen movie.
Salt Lake Tribune
The ranting, whining, kvetching, self-involved family begins to outstay its welcome [...] so that time spent with them can feel like entrapment at a raucous bar mitzvah reception.
Full Review
Film Journal International
Product Description:
Like a cinema vérité version of THE DAYTRIPPERS, writer-director Andrew Wagner's quirky indie dramedy THE TALENT GIVEN US fashions a hilarious, unconventional, but ultimately moving take on family values. In an inspired bit of casting, Wagner taps his real-life parents and sisters for the fictional roles of a dysfunctional family on a revelatory cross-country road trip. Allen (Allen Wagner) and Judy (Judy Wagner) are an elderly retired couple living on Manhattan's Upper West Side when they spontaneously decide to visit their estranged son, Andrew (Wagner), in Los Angeles. Opting to drive instead of fly, Judy and Allen invite their two grown daughters, self-absorbed Emily (Emily Wagner) and the more down-to-earth Maggie (Maggie Wagner), for an attempt at family togetherness that ends up becoming a funny but oddly healing group therapy session. To further muddle the line between reality and fiction, Wagner himself helms the handheld digital camera for an added dimension of nearly unbearable intimacy.