Official Competition

This movie is marketed as black comedy (it could be blacker for my taste) but it is basically a vehicle for great actors to overact, making fun of their profession but also show facets of their craft (there are many ways to say "Good Day"). On the other hand the movie draws attention to some facets of filmmaking that is usually neglectet, e. G. the importance of how sound is recorded. We've seen many films about filmmaking and art, and this is definitely not one of the worst of its kind.

Oscar martinez holds his own against these two super stars of cinema. A woman director making a film on her own terms. Dealing with two super ego males. Much inside movie stuff and many laughs. Can't believe penelope and antonio have never worked together before. Must see.

Thoroughly enjoyed this...lots of light comedy, dueling egos, accurate portrayal of actors' world. Great performs by the 3 lead characters...also a twist at end, so rather profound. I pretty much ONLY watch indie arty movies and this was a light delight! Highly recco!

What is wrong with these "creative" people? It seems they can only make movies about themselves and their tiny little micro-cosmos of movie making. It's like books in which the main character is a writer. If art and literature cannot talk about anything but itself, it serves no purpose and deserves to be ignored. Do the people who make these movies have any contact with life outside the world of movie making? Do they have any experience of life as lived by the rest of humanity? Have any of them ever worked as carpenters, truck drivers, shop assistants, insurance agents, accountants, soldiers or seamstresses? If they have no life experience they cannot say anything that relates to the audience. I do not understand why people waste their time watching the work of these self-obsessed narcissists.

Very intelligent and entertaining movie from the beginning until the end. Penelope Cruz keeps on surprising me, being better actress and more beautiful. Both male actors have a fantastic performance as well. This movie combines the ingredients of being a good movie with comedy and suspense / drama..

I just can't believe that a director could abuse her two internationally famed actors as her wish. Actors signed on to play roles they think good for them to play, but if the actors are well-known or even award winning ones, usually, the directors might have to humble themselves to accommodate with those actors, unlike what the female director who would and could abuse, insult or abuse the ego, the dignity and the vanity of such famous actors like what we saw in it. This movie somehow actually delivers and shows us something about the people who involve in a movie production. There are several moments that I laughed, they are actually quite funny. A movie with limited participants and limited settings, all based upon a bare-bone skeleton-like hollow script, and it's obviously not easy to hold the interest of the audiences, yet it works by recruiting several great actors of our time. It's a very good analysis on peoples' egos, especially on those famous actors who sometimes have to compete with each other in the same movie as opponents to each other for better and greater performance. This linear going simple yet also complicated long movie indeed needs your patience and sense of humor to to through it.

This movie had lots of hype, but I did not find it tremendously thrilling. Maybe I was outside the Hollywood circuit, and the subtleties went over my head. There is this famous director directing a billionaire's ego-legacy film, that hires a famous film star, and a famous theater actor twice his age, to play a pair of similar-age brothers. The story of the film within the movie is about sibling rivalry, but there is rivalry among the two main actors. Meanwhile, the director is showing who's the boss by bullying both of them, and it seems a miracle that neither actor felt sufficiently disrespected to walk off the job. Oh, and "Official Competition" is a misleading title, based on one scene in the movie.

No pun intended - actually it is what the movie itself is being called in Germany. Title wise that is - so your ticket in Germany would read or say that as a title. Kind of crazy and not nearly as subtle as the movie itself is. To be fair, the movie is not just subtle. It has a few laugh out loud moments. There was one, where another individual could not contain himself and was laughing for a minute straight - totally justifiable. The three central performances of this movie are so good - and fresh in my memory since I watched the movie earlier today. Sublime, pitch perfect and really walking the thin line as good as humanly possible, without falling for the cliche traps ... that is quite the achievement the movie and the actors are able to ... well achieve. Humor of course is always in the eye of the beholder and you may feel that some scenes do not work. Or that the jokes/twists (the big ones) are being telegraphed. But that is the fun in watching and exploring how it all evolves (or is it devolves?) ... tightly written and edited, the movie may be about two hours long, but never feels close to a drag or anything like that.