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I loved this film from the first time I saw it, and I've never met anyone out here in the real world that's not loved it (but I only know about 5 people who've seen it and one of them was a burnout stoner wrestler whose opinion of the film went a little something like this:"That Magnolia movie is some crazy **** man!"). I watched it again recently and the film rose to my top 20 of all-time. It had always been around it, but this viewing really hit me. I think the ensemble is one of the finest of the 90s, with each actor fully realizing their character and bringing them to life so that they were all believable, even when crazy occurences were happening all around them. Most of the problems people have with the film, I enjoyed: the raining frogs was quite the shock and brings on the movie's catharsis perfectly, the sing-along was wonderfully executed and further illustrated the characters connection, and although the film certainly was ambitious, it was by no means meaningless or overly-pretentious. The only thing that keeps this from being higher on my list of favorites is that Anderson's style borrows a lot from Scorsese, but it works in the style of the film, so its hardly worth mentioning. This isn't a film for everyone, but I loved it.
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