I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This comedy/drama/romance is neither funny, dramatic, nor romantic.The acting is wooden and amateurish, the cinematography is no better than a home movie, the editing is embarrassing, and the directing is appalling. Did I mention how awful the acting is? It's bad, really bad. It's impossible to feel any affinity for any of the characters and so difficult to care what happens in the film or to the individuals.The script is constructed entirely of clichéd language and set pieces that make the whole movie feel disjointed and clunky. It alludes to providing insight into the age-old relationship between Jews and Muslims but doesn't expose or inform in any way.Above all of this, the major failure is the soundtrack which is so irritating that, if you watch this film at all, you should turn the sound off and watch with subtitles.

This is really a nice movie, with highly sympathetic characters and a bit of tension between the Jewish and Muslim cultures (not too much, mind you), and a pleasant, happy, all's-well-with-the-world ending (apart from the prominent anti-male comment). But it leaves you wondering whether it isn't mostly a fantasy. Did family and neighbours really do no more than tsk-tsk at their friendship? No insults? No warnings? No threats? The young women were very family-bound and would have found it very difficult to choose friendship over family loyalty. But most of all did the two friends never talk about Israel and Palestine? How could they avoid a rift when that topic came up? Still, I suppose not every movie has to fit perfectly into reality. Arranged is a very nice feel-good movie that should have been seen more widely.

So, two girls from traditional families, one Jewish one Muslim, discover they have much more in common than anyone imagined. Sadly, this movie is nothing more than the heartfelt wish, of the writers and director, for how the world ought to be, not how it really is. Do not confuse this movie for reality.The girls are attractive, the acting is good, the sentiment is sweet, and I enjoyed the scenes of Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, a place I know fairly well. But to call the movie sophomoric is to give sophomores a bad name.Yes, of course, individuals are the same everywhere, but this explains almost nothing about the world we live in. If everybody wants to be left in peace and to mind his own business, why are there wars? Why do husbands beat wives? Why do mothers abandon children? Ethnic cleansing? Jihad? Crusades? Etc., etc., etc. The world is more complicated than two young women who want to marry for love. Considerably more complicated, and a lot nastier.Rachel and Nasira teach 4th grade at an elementary school in Brooklyn. Early in the movie, the children wonder about the teachers working together, and one students asks, "Don't the Muslims want to kill the Jews?" and the movie is off and running with its basic message that people everywhere are the same and all the unpleasantness is just a terrible misunderstanding.There is no misunderstanding. Lots of people have lots of ideas, and not all these ideas are sweet and generous. One poignant moment came when Nasira rejected the first suitor her father chose for her. Her father understood (so arranged marriages are alright). Well, fathers sometimes do understand. But twelve year old Afghan and Yemeni girls marrying 40 and 50 year old men is proof that fathers sometimes do not understand.If Stefan Schaefer and Yuta Silverman (the writers), and Diane Crespo (the director), want to do more than "imagine world peace," if they want to strike a blow for world peace, they would do us all a favor by telling how it really is, rather than concocting a fable of arranged marriages.

The blind dates aren't going well for Rochel(Zoe Lister Jones). She considers losing her religion, which means, losing her family. But first, a trial run, one night without the trappings of being Orthodox Jewish, before she makes up her mind. Rochel goes to a house party with her cousin. There's drinking and smoking and gentile boys, but Rochel doesn't drink, or smoke, or seem interested in the boy who insists that she dance with him. The night is a bust. At this point, "Arranged", unintended or not, makes us wonder if Rochel likes boys at all. Maybe the Orthodox Jewish girl is in love with the Orthodox Muslim girl. Nasira(Francis Benhamou) hasn't found the right man either. Neither girl makes a move. Straight and picky, both Rochel and Nasira are unlike the women depicted in past films who did their growing up within a patriarchal(arguably, archaic) construct, by which the girls walk into arranged marriages like lambs to the slaughter. In "Arranged", the two orthodox girls, straight and picky, have some flexibility during husband season, so they exercise it. Although there's never the slightest inclination towards romantic love, it makes you wonder, if each girl's respective religion would prevent a declaration of attraction, had there been one from either heart. When the Muslim girl invites the Jewish girl to her home, and she tattoos the Jewish girl's hand in her room, "Arranged" could have really challenged the orthodoxy shared by both religions that a woman needs a good man. But this square film, is square just like its two female leads who befriend each other, and that's okay, that's more than enough, because "Arranged" has a low-key charm that builds bridges across the religious divide without being cloying about it. But, oooh. It would've been awesome if they kissed.