Long on hero worship and woefully short on insight, Lula: Son of Brazil oozes good intentions, but it wouldn't look out of place in a retrospective of early Soviet workerist cinema.
The screenplay by Daniel Tendler, Fernando Bonassi and Lula biographer Parana succumbs to many of the most unfortunate narrative tendencies of biopics, including a proclivity for piling on incident after incident as a substitute for real character insight.
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Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
Fábio Barreto's film is an act of hero worship, not a multifaceted exploration of a charismatic leader.
A sense of the man himself seems absent in Fábio Barreto's portrait, however, and other than a rally scene with prescient Occupy Wall Street overtones, you're mostly left with facts, dates and iconic poses.
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Village VoiceMelissa Anderson
Village VoiceMelissa Anderson
Forget "Son of Brazil": This syrupy origin story/biopic on the nation's beloved reformist president, whose second term ended in 2010, should be titled Mama's Boy.
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Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine
This insipidly inspirational biopic of the two-term Brazilian president is a safe, bourgeois vision of proletarian struggle.