Rating: 
Summary: (Not) Simply Wonderful
Review: If you are a person who prefers the comfort of idealized, Hollywood-style representations of what life should be like, then this is not the movie for you. But for those of us who relish the contradictions present in human character, who can find beauty and comedy in the profane, and who see beyond the dichotomy of "good" and "bad/evil", Henry Fool provides a gripping, funny, and inspiring portrait of "real" people, with all of their complexity.
Rating: 
Summary: uneven but worthwhile
Review: It has been said that Hal Hartley, like Woody Allen, is a one-trick pony. In one sense this is true. Resisting conventional story-telling his films nevertheless all display the same recognisably mannered, quirky style. At the same time (like Allen) his films have all been seen as existential meditations - on desire, fame, love, death, loneliness or frustrated artistic ambition. Henry Fool exhibits both the pleasures and pitfalls in this vision. The interesting theme of artistic delusion certainly provides moments of great dialogue for Thomas Jay Ryan in the lead. These are more than sufficient to make it worth the effort. However, Hartley's typical concern with ideas and the spoken word over narrative makes this film very unwieldy and ultimately unsatisfying. While much more convincing and substantial than the frankly pretentious 'Amatuer', it has none of the developed characterisation that made 'Trust' such an engaging and WARM film. In short, while Henry Fool is often very clever, witty and complex it is difficult to like or care a great deal about anyone in it. That said, Hartley should be commended for taking risks and going where few would fear to tread. If you're new to Hartley, I'd first check out 'Three Shorts by Hal Hartley' (for the magnificant 'Surviving Desire') as well as the afore-mentioned 'Trust'. Both star the excellent Martin Donovan who seems to really breath life into Hartley's often deliberately sterile if intelligent writing.
Rating: 
Summary: almost a great film
Review: It is almost a great film. Watching the last half of this movie, I felt like a was watching a totally different movie. The beginning is brilliant,funny, insightful and poetic. The beginning makes the movie great. The last part of the movie is darker, depressing and hard to watch, ruining an otherwise good movie. most of the movie centers the Simon character and his writing and his raise to fame, with Henry Fool offering little bits of literary insights. For some reason, Henry is the main character and Simon isn't. The first part of the movie (the good half) focuses on Simon. It fails when, at the end, it focuses on Henry Fool and Simon almosts disappears. Maybe, it was the actor's performance or screen presence, but Henry Fool was not a great character. And watching the film, I didn't think he was the main character. The movie should be retitled with the ending changed.
Rating:
Summary: Delightfool.
Review: It was a long Sunday evening that has started with watchingFight Club and hating that schlock. Looking for an antidote - and theevening's second feature - I chose Hal Hartley's Henry Fool. Another film about a guru coming into the life of dissatisfied young man to widen the horizons, to take it to the limit. But, hopefully, with a different accent. It's very, very good, especially at the second viewing a couple days later when I saw the things in a perspective. Henry reminds me vaguely of Lou Pascal from Louis Malle's Atlantic City - the "mobster" retired from the "bloody work" he never did. He charms people with his fake sophistication, lives on their money and makes love to any body available. Lou is noblier, but when the time comes Henry also answers it's call, though in even clumsier way. Thomas Jay Ryan seems to be genetically bred for the part. The head of a water buffalo, the stubborn look of self-proclaimed genius, the flaring nostrils. How I liked him walking in a dark three-piece suit and white running shoes! He is a manipulator, but the person he is fooling with all the time is himself. If only he was a bit smarter, not so self-deluded! He'd never try to publish his opus and get an earful of truth as a reward. He would just burn the pulp in the furnace, sit for a day somewhere near, emitting the sad whispers: - No...not yet...the world is not ready for that...it's too...too...no... - and then speak for the rest of his life of Nobel prize - winning mediocricy that is no match to the masterpiece he buried with his own hands. But he is a Fool after all! What I liked the most about the film is that almost any time my thoughts tried to slip into the groove chiseled in my brain by watching the current Holliwood produce, the plot - if the word is appropriate here - took an unanticipated turn. Simon promises Henry to back up his book, to put his own poemm's publication at stake, then reads the guru's blubbering and signs his contract. And surprisingly it does not look like a treachery. There is a lot of quirky moments put in the film with no particular reason. Simon's vomitting and Henry's noisy pooping are nothing more than a respectful bows in a general direction of alternative cinema. Somehow the public emittance of bodily substances is required by the genre - just like shootouts and car chases are the must in action flicks. And there are some totally meaningless gems I've enjoyed. Remember the school paper's board of editors - white, black and Asian girls in the shop - a model of humanitty divided in controversy over Simon's statement? Is the scene - or the film itself - smart, or funny, or stupid? None of these. It's just so, It's something else. And the thing I am looking for these days is that something else. P.S. I am shocked by Leonard Maltin's review. Are there any qualification tests for film critics? Evidently there were none at the time he got a job.
Rating:
Summary: An Overlooked Masterpiece
Review: It's a shame that "Henry Fool" remains relatively overlooked and underrated. In large part because it's such a departure from his earlier films, Hal Hartley purists couldn't stomach the epic scale and thematic shift of the film, and audiences who would likely appreciate the movie never even saw it. In my opinion though, Henry Fool is a true masterpiece of American cinema and one of the best films of the 1990s. If you look at films like "Trust", "Simple Men" and "Amateur" as early, developmental works in Hal Hartley's maturation as a filmmaker, and then see "Flirt" as his attempt to identify himself more as a "director" than a "writer", then "Henry Fool" is the fruit of that labor - not only is it precisely, minimalistically and efficiently directed, but it's far and away his best writing yet. His favorite themes are expanded and blown up within a mythic frame, and his casting here of stage actors (especially the hefty presence of Thomas Jay Ryan) separates the film from Hartley's earlier work. However, it retains the philosophical tone, the inner musings of character, and the precision of their actions. This time, however, Hartley accomplishes this by expanding the frame with which he grapples with friendship, family, ambition, achievement and betrayal, and ends up with a shattering parable about who we choose to be in our lives. The film is about greatness, and thanks to Hartley's fearlessness in envisioning conceptions of greatness, it is, itself, great.
Rating:
Summary: It's difficult to tell....
Review: It's difficult to tell if Henry Fool is a really bad good film or a really good bad film. It was quite long yet morbidly fascinating.
Rating: 
Summary: Beyond Bad
Review: Like many others, I rented this movie because of Parker Posey who I loved in Waiting for Guffman, Clockwatchers and The House of Yes. Unfortunately, the character she plays in this film was pretty flat and uninteresting. I really didn't care what happened to anyone in the film. It was slow, long and some scenes just plain made me sick and I had to turn away. I fell asleep near the end (that's how thrilling it was), and I never do that. The whole storyline was unengaging and the dialogue was very tiresome and repetitive. This film lacked everything: a well written story, detailed character development and any semblance of purpose or direction. It relied on cheap meaningless scenes with vomit, diarrhea, sex, violence etc. Not all independent films are worth raving about.
Rating:
Summary: Posey and Urbaniak do their best, but....
Review: Like so many others, I originally picked up this movie because of the amazing and wonderful Parker Posey. I was charmed by Urbaniak, who was the shining piece of this otherwise irritating movie. The movie is overly long (and I usually LOVE movies that make others complain about the excess length) and rather than sweep you into the story and the characters, it brushes you off and leaves you sitting rolling your eyes and asking when it will all end. I forced myself to watch to the end, but only because of Posey and Urbaniak... without them I would have returned it unwatched and not even rewound.
Rating:
Summary: Cannot wait for a DVD
Review: One evening i saw "The Book of Life" on TV, and i love it, it was a 1998 Hal Hartley film, so then i fell in love with the director after seeing "Book of Life" that when the ending credits, ended, and i runned to my computer and searched the imdb,for this director's profiles, and you know, i was most interested on Henry Fool, so then i gotted to a Blockbuster, and rented it, and i was fully captivated, the music, the perfomances, the storyline, are well great, everything in the film it's great,it's fantastic, full of human spririt, also i cannot wait for the day that Sony, Winstar and WB realeases all the Hal Hartley films on DVD, fourtanely Winstar realeased "Book" on last November, and Miramax realeased "The Unbeliveable Truth" on March of this year, also i think that "Henry Fool" it's a film that all christians should see, for the situation that there has been with the Harry Potter books, and this film can change their lives, i loved this one, also buy the soundtrack it's great too, it's as great as every Hal Hartley film soundtack released, the only problem with the film was that the director commited an error adding the sex, vomiting and diarrea scenes to the movie, they kind of destroy about what this film really is, it's worth watching, and probably owning, also let me tell you that all Hal Hartley films should not be watched on theaters, it should be watched on TV or video or DVD, because you understand them a lot more, also here is my ultimate message: H.H. without a doubt an alien,it's imagination and itelligence, stretch beyond our mortal minds, i think he should be classified as one of the greatest indie film directors of all time, or at least of this times.
Rating:
Summary: Cannot wait for a DVD
Review: One evening i saw "The Book of Life" on TV, and i love it, it was a 1998 Hal Hartley film, so then i fell in love with the director after seeing "Book of Life" that when the ending credits, ended, and i runned to my computer and searched the imdb,for this director's profiles, and you know, i was most interested on Henry Fool, so then i gotted to a Blockbuster, and rented it, and i was fully captivated, the music, the perfomances, the storyline, are well great, everything in the film it's great,it's fantastic, full of human spririt, also i cannot wait for the day that Sony, Winstar and WB realeases all the Hal Hartley films on DVD, fourtanely Winstar realeased "Book" on last November, and Miramax realeased "The Unbeliveable Truth" on March of this year, also i think that "Henry Fool" it's a film that all christians should see, for the situation that there has been with the Harry Potter books, and this film can change their lives, i loved this one, also buy the soundtrack it's great too, it's as great as every Hal Hartley film soundtack released, the only problem with the film was that the director commited an error adding the sex, vomiting and diarrea scenes to the movie, they kind of destroy about what this film really is, it's worth watching, and probably owning, also let me tell you that all Hal Hartley films should not be watched on theaters, it should be watched on TV or video or DVD, because you understand them a lot more, also here is my ultimate message: H.H. without a doubt an alien,it's imagination and itelligence, stretch beyond our mortal minds, i think he should be classified as one of the greatest indie film directors of all time, or at least of this times.
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