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Staring: Paul Schneider (IV), Zooey Deschanel, Shea Whigham, Danny R. McBride, Maurice Compte
Director: David Gordon Green
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Product Details
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Sony
EAN: 9781404923058
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 1404923055
Label: Sony Pictures
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Region Code: 99
Release Date: 2003-08-19
Running Time: 108
Studio: Sony Pictures
Theatrical Release Date: 2003

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Editorial Review
Product Description
Provocative story of two young lovers who discover the power of passion and the irrational and emotionally addictive feelings of love lust & carnal desire. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 05/27/2008 Starring: Patricia Clarkson Paul Schneider Run time: 108 minutes Rating: R Director: David Gordon Green

Amazon.com
You'd think moviemakers would have run out of new ways of capturing the trials and joys of young love--but director David Gordon Green finds a fresh take in All the Real Girls, a bittersweet small-town romance. By leaving out the usual humdrum exposition of a courtship story, Green cuts right to the little moments that form the high and low points of a budding relationship. It's an impressionistic style aided by the wonderfully spontaneous and unpredictable acting of Paul Schneider (who also co-scripted) and Zooey Deschanel--who look like they're improvising, even though they're not. As in Green's excellent debut feature George Washington, a small town serves as an atmospheric backdrop--this place looks a couple of decades shy of the 21st century. The mosaic approach makes the film play like a collection of memories, someone's first love recalled with fondness and just a bit of regret. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

Moving and Honest, 2008-03-22
We've all been there:
Young love, mind running wild, heart beating fast just thinking about that special someone. Films have run this idea into the ground, making it seem cheesy to many people; I haven't lost hope though, always looking for that perfect film which captures young love: a film that makes me miss having the reckless abandon that comes with fragile emotions and simply not enough time to understand what it all means.

This is a film for those who like to reflect. For some, Green's impressionistic style will bring back to the surface old feelings, capturing perfectly the idealism and the ups and downs of first loves. For the embittered who have grown up to be a product of the skepticism and sourness that plagues our age, this film might be just what it takes to bust through the mortal coil and into the heart, which never truly stops believing.

Set in a rural mountain town, the lovers do not have to compete with Hollywood hype and the mediation of other romantic films of this type. The acting is superb: if anyone leaves a viewing of this film without being entirely enamored with the onscreen chemistry between Paul Shneider's Paul and Zooey Deschanel's Noel than maybe it's time that person truly does give up on love.

This is more than a film for nostalgia's sake; it is a film for the ages, for anyone who has loved so deeply it hurts and then been hurt so deeply by that same feeling. It's a film about moving on.

GOD-AWFUL, artsy-fartsy soap opera..., 2008-07-22
I'm giving this movie two stars rather than one SOLELY because I found female lead Zooey Deschanel very easy on the eyes and a fairly decent actress. Unfortunately, male lead Paul Shneider couldn't act his way out of a paper bag, and we the audience are stuck with him being on screen most of the time. (Plus he's way too dorky-looking to play the part of the town Cassanova.) If I had to choose one word to sum up this movie, it'd be: TEDIOUS. Not just painfully slow, but painfully OBVIOUS and predictable and cliche-ridden, and the script is one of the worst I've ever been subjected to in years. It's as though whoever wrote the dialogue is trying be as artfully artless, dull, terse and Hemingway-esque as possible, and instead has created a completely dead, stultifying corpse of a movie, with some of the most cringe-inducing lines I've heard in years (and this from someone who goes out of his way to avoid movies with horrible dialogue, i.e. Hollywood blockbusters). Patricia Clarkson can't save this movie, no matter how good she is in her all too minor role.

ZZZZZZZ!

Good Film, 2008-09-07
All The Real Girls was David Gordon Green's 2003 follow up film to his 2000 debut film George Washington, which became an underground classic. The good news is that it is a superior film to that earlier excellent film, and Green shows real growth as a filmmaker. Like the earlier film, this film breaks with traditional narrative, and spends the first third, or so, of its hour and forty eight minutes running time devoted to simply introducing the viewer to the main characters of the small southern town it's set in, with rapturous cinematography by Tim Orr. Although the film was shot in and around Asheville, North Carolina, it's not set in any specific time nor place. There is very little, in terms of technology nor cultural references, to date it.
The film grabs the viewer from its terrific opening scene, where two unknown lovers talk about why the boy has not even tried to kiss the girl. It is an awkward, but tender, scene, and we will soon learn the reasons why he has not kissed her, but it is the sort of scene that no Hollywood producer would let any film of theirs open with. We soon learn that these two main characters are the town's noted Lothario, Paul (Paul Schneider), an aimless but earnest fellow in his early twenties, and his odd girlfriend Noel (Zooey Deschanel), the college aged sister of Paul's best friend, Tip (Shea Whigham), who looks like he just stepped out of a James Dean film. Of course, Tip objects to the relationship between his best friend and baby sister, for he knows that Paul is as big a poon hound as he is, and violence ensues. Yet, it is not in the Hollywood fashion, and plays no major role in the film, which follows the realistic ups and downs of the first real love relationship for both characters. Even though Noel is a virgin when they meet, as she comes back to town after being away at boarding school, it is Paul who is the more insecure about himself. This may be because Noel's family is from a richer social class, but the viewer need not be spoonfed such information for the scenes unfold, one after the other, and give us snippets not only into the lead characters, but into the lesser characters, too, and this, in turn, lets us know more about their social and family milieu than direct exposition through straight ahead narrative.... This film is thus one that transcends its chronological bounds on film. The viewer has seen more than enough of the lead characters to care for them, so this film is really more about the place this little romance unfolds in, not its particular participants. The film's producers, Lisa Muskat and Jean Doumanian should be commended for supporting such fine work. It will ease your angst, and make almost two hours of your life a little brighter.

A hard pill to swallow, 2008-03-31
I did give it three stars for being different and interesting, but I say that with a bit of reservation. For this film is unbelievably bleak. While I hate those fairy tale love stories like "sleepless in Seattle" as much as the next guy, this goes in a complete opposite extreme. This guy meets a girl who he thinks is different from the rest, and he does his best to do right by her and offers her the respect he thinks she deserves. Yet, she does not reciprocate that respect and the inevitable disillusionment sets in because of it. He soon realizes that the person he loved never really existed at all. That she only seemed that way due to her boarding school upbringing, that she isn't as she is by choice, but by environment alone. Now that she is out of school she quickly morphs back into a "real girl" if you will. As interesting as I found it I also found the cynicism of it all rather depressing. I say this because if this is what "all the real girls" are like, who would want one. For according to this, "all the real girls" are not worthy of a man's respect. At least, that is the way I saw it. In the end, it gave a voice to my own cynicism and disillusionment. For this movie resembles my love life. I just hope to God this isn't really true.

Finding Love and Attempting Privacy in a Small Town, 2007-08-11
ALL THE REAL GIRLS is strange little film written and directed by David Gordon Green, an attempt to capture the claustrophobia of a small North Carolina town where finding love in the midst of an atmosphere devoid of secrets. It boasts a strong cast, has some moments of touching repartee, but in the end we are left with a lack of feeling for/caring about any of the characters. Green's fidgety camera work, jumbled scene changes, and lack of character development prevent the good points to out weigh the weak ones.

Hometown lothario Paul (Paul Schneider) is best friends with another womanizer Tip (Shea Whigham) whose sister Noel (Zooey Deschanel) returns home from a boarding school and falls for Paul. Paul and Noel do a courtship dance, the first act of a relationship that includes more talk and self-confession than physical. Tip objects to Paul's interest in his sister and this of course only fans the flame of romance. The cadre of homeboys (Danny R. McBride and Maurice Compte) watch on the sidelines as the Romeo and Juliet affair takes place. Paul's mother (Patricia Clarkson) and uncle (Benjamin Mouton) add what words of twisted wisdom they can. The love affair is the first serious relationship Paul has ever encountered and for the first time it is the girl who throws the wrench into the experience, a factor that allows the story to simply end.

With a cast that includes some truly gifted actors (Deschanel and Clarkson especially) the viewer has to reflect on why there is no true concern for anybody in the film, no screen chemistry and no charisma that would have helped make this belabored effort worthwhile. David Gordon Green is young and has some very sound ideas about film, but he needs to talk to his audiences about communication to enable him to make solid movies. Grady Harp, August 07

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