I really wanted to like this movie, but ultimately it was a disappointment.

It seems to have the ingredients: an intriguing historical background, an interesting minority, characters out of their element and the World Cup. But in the end we still had the ingredients - and no soup.

What purpose did the World Cup side-story serve? At the climax of the movie, Brazil won. Did the director want to say that ultimately, "Brazil won"? The cup could work as interesting backdrop, but it played too big a part and took us nowhere. Was this a movie about the military dictatorship of Brazil? Or the movie of an abandoned boy? Each part worked nicely, but no part seemed to contribute to another thus making all of them redundant.

Hamburger resisted the temptation to let the movie become too sentimental and avoided many clichés. On the other hand, the lack of any emotional climax left me feeling rather numb. It was too underplayed, something very rarely seen in cinema.

The little Jewish girl was excellent, and the sub-plot of her selling tickets to the changing room was entertaining. It didn't take the story anywhere, but it was entertaining. Here I believed in the scene and the people. Too many times that wasn't the case. The 4-5 (!) scenes with celebrating, dancing Jews just didn't seem realistic. The conversations between the mother and son didn't seem realistic. Too many times I was taken back to reality.

I was particularly disappointed that the excellent actor Paulo Autran didn't play a bigger role. I would have much preferred to see him play the role of Shlomo, although Haiut did a good job. Simone Spoladore was mediocre, Eduardo Moreira as the father was significantly better. Both roles were short, but crucial for the build-up of the movie.

It was nice to see relatively few familiar faces. Brazilian cinema seems to be covered by the same 10 actors in most movies. Michel Joelsas (Mauro) did well in the movie. He is credible and that carries the movie a good deal of the way.

Overall I believe that Cao Hamburger has a promising future as a director - but this movie didn't do much for me. For my Brazilian friends, however, this movie seems to be a hit.

"O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias" is the most important Brazilian export of 2007, and as many said, a strong contender for the Academy Awards. The movie was beautiful: the cinematography, the music, the actors. The scenery was perfectly created and it looked perfectly like São Paulo and Brazil in the 1970's. With all that, the movie still failed to excite me or create any major emotion. The movie was very flat, and ran without a climax. Plus I wasn't very familiar with the 70's history, and the fact that the movie doesn't go deeper into the issues of the time got me a bit confused. I recommend a little researching prior to watching the movie. Overall, the movie was OK, but the characterization should have been developed further and some kind of bigger conflict should have brought excitement to the movie.

It's quite a trick to marry social comment to entertainment but this one works to a fare-thee-well and although Brazilians and students of South American cultural and political life in the 1970s will get more out of it there's certainly enough left for the average Joe. To nutshell it; the dictatorship is fairly harsh, so much so that one particular couple decide to take it on the Jesse Owens while they can, the fly in the ointment being their twelve year old son, Mauro. Since they can't tell anyone the truth they dump him outside the apartment of his grandfather with instructions to tell him that they have just gone on vacation and will be back in time for the final of the World Cup - in which, of course, Brazil participated that year. So far so good but what they could have but didn't foresee was that grandfather died hours before which leaves Mauro stranded in a primarily Jewish and Ialian community where he knows no one. The main thrust of the film, of course, is how a twelve year old copes with this and it is not necessary to reveal more except to say that it's a fine movie.