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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
The sheer audacity of My Dinner with Andre drew throngs of curious filmgoers who made the film the most talked-about art-house hit of 1981. After all, who'd ever heard of a movie consisting of nearly two hours of nonstop dinner conversation? Ah... but this isn't just any conversation--it's the kind of mesmerizing, soul-searching, life-affirming exploration that we feel privileged to listen to, and with unobtrusive style, director Louis Malle invites us to eavesdrop to our hearts' and minds' content. The film was written by two New Yorkers at the dinner table, noted playwright-actor Wallace Shawn and well-known stage director Andre Gregory, who essentially play themselves. They taped their conversations for several weeks and Shawn gradually shaped them into a scripted conversation, but you'd never know it from watching the movie. The talk flows and flows until you're captivated by Gregory's stories of world travel and spiritual quests in Poland, India, Tibet, the Sahara desert... the tales of a soul-searcher who'd dropped out of the theater world to rediscover his zest for living. Shawn plays the skeptic, the voice of reason, his feet on the ground but his own mind willing to soar. The cumulative effect of this conversation is almost hypnotic, and certainly plays into our eternal appetite for storytelling. Both primal and sophisticated, witty and profound, My Dinner with Andre is a film that can be savored over time, offering new revelations with each viewing as the listener-viewer develops his or her own appreciation of life's great mysteries. --Jeff Shannon
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Thoughts
This movie should be Shown in All High Schools and THEN,
debates should be had for weeks.
then, DROP it. let the mind simmer in its soup and
you have the buildings of the mind and soul foundations.
what each CHILD needs, before age 18.
in asia, all this talking, is nothing new.
but in your world, this is New.
so be it. Let the rights for this movie be free
and see how many show it on tv, and other media.
pls push the rights ... Read More
Rating:  - Yummy!
Call me a formalist, but sometimes I like to turn down the volume and soak in the splendid visuals.
Rating: - A radical concept...2 adults talking about things that really matter, and still matter...
Normally, I should dislike a film like this. I don't like talk fests, and honestly, from a cinematic standpoint, this film is quite boring. But the screenplay, direction, acting, and conversation are so outstanding that this flaw seems so inconsequential. The difference I think between modern talk fests and this film is that Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn (who wrote the screenplay themselves) are so interesting, multi-faceted, complex, and engaging, as opposed to current talk fests, where the characters ... Read More
Rating: - They eat, they drink, they talk about things that really matter.
Louis Malle's 1981 film, My Dinner with Andre, involves a 110-minute dinner conversation between two likable New York intellectuals (Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory) over roast quail in an upscale restaurant. Shawn is a struggling actor, who spends his time thinking about art and culture. He is a modest, down-to-earth skeptic, who enjoys life's simple pleasures: a cup of coffee, the New York Times delivered to his door, and having dinner with his girlfriend. By contrast, Andre is a new-agey world traveler, ... Read More
Rating: - My EVOLVING Dinner with Andre
I have loved this movie since I first saw it on PBS in Los Angeles (well, Downey, actually, but the PBS station was in Los Angeles). And I am glad, now, that I bought my DVD from AMAZON before inflation set in because I could never afford to lay out $135.00 even for THIS movie. (Get the VHS until someone re-releases it on DVD---Wally doesn't need the money what with THE HAUNTED MANSION and THE PRINCESS BRIDE and the new JACK AND THE BEANSTALK. But if you absolutely HAVE to have a DVD of this and just can't wait ... Read More
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