A Very Entertaining Film

Rating: 7/10 (3 May 1999)

You do not have to be a lover of Mozart's music to enjoy this film. The circumstances surrounding the composer's death remain a mystery, and it would be a mistake to see the film as a historical account. The achievement of the film lies in the extent to which it enables us to share in the joyful and almost boyish enthusiasm with which Mozart (Tom Hulce) expresses himself through his music, and to marvel at his eternal optimism in the face of constant adversity, much of it caused by his jealous rival Salieri (Murray Abraham). Hulce's performance is wonderfully spontaneous and energetic, with Abraham's appropriately menacing. Not a great film perhaps, but an enormously entertaining one nonetheless.