Most critics like Underground, and the praise gathers around the same things: the scale and energy of Kusturica’s staging, the circus-like set-pieces, and the way lowbrow slapstick sits beside an allegory about Yugoslavia’s political self-deception. Several describe it as sprawling and feverish, a comedy with real pain underneath, and more than one singles out the final sequence as the point where the humour and the sorrow finally meet.
The reservations cluster around length and purpose. Even admirers concede that three hours leave the viewer worn out, and the sceptics go further. Empire finds it rambling and increasingly hard to follow after a strong opening, Time Out cannot work out what the allegory is for, and The Independent calls it wilful and short on feeling for its people. The spread is wide, from wholehearted enthusiasm to outright irritation, and the sharpest dissent comes largely from the British press.