Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

cocuyo100 The movie is a fraud, a joke that has nothing to do with real-life transsexuals. It is a macho fantasy invested in the huge penis and the fraudulent make-believe that it belongs to a man who in fact is a woman--an actress. The casting would be honest to life if the role was played by a man-- why not cast her gay boy friend actor as the cross-dresser to wants to have his penis removed? Transamerica is more honest in presenting a man, who although played by an actress, is more convincing as someone who is genuinely born with a female genetic make up and by virtue of that wants to go cross genders to finally become as fully female as possible. In 20 Centímetros, which is in fact a male gay phallus fantasy, the man who wants a new gender as a female is never established as a genetic case of someone who was born in the wrong sex anatomy and resulting gender social identity as a boy--who was more female than male although he was a boy. What we have here is a male sex worker (played by a woman) who enhances her sex trade (as they do in Bahia, Brazil, with silicone) by keeping her penis, in order to better satisfy clients who are gays or bisexuals and who find it easier to have sex with men who do not look like men with the help of silicone. 20 Centímetros is a gay farce that exploits the vogue of transsexuals in Spain and elsewhere

ptb-8 Imitating another person's already successful work does not automatically make yours the same... here we have a film that is an imitation Almodovar pic from about 1989.. a sort of musical version of WOMEN ON THE VERGE mixed with ideas from MY PRIVATE IDAHO and imagery from The UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG or the mid 60s Mediterranean musicals from Italy or even Greece (Aliki Vougyouklaki, all is forgiven)... 20 CENTERMETERS is actually a funny/charming idea in that it is about someone desperate who has narcolepsy and when asleep imagines big musical numbers... but that is the extent of the funny or genuinely attractive part. sadly, guess what, and yes no surprise, it is set in the world of street prostitutes, selfish squabbling misfits and shabby apartment blocks with miserable squalor. Why? This film could be more like CLUELESS for adults rather than obvious extensions of already grimy scenes copied from Almodovar. I wanted to like this film but I became tired of it and found the musical numbers, whilst slavishly amusing just became tiresome. The sexual content is far too explicit and the bathroom scenes while our 'leading actress' is alone and getting off on herself are truly disgusting. 20 Centimeters is a disappointment... and I never thought I would ever say that.

nycritic Thanks to Pedro Almodovar, Spain has birthed more directors who have explored the fluidity between the sexes in some truly groundbreaking movies. Now comes Ramon Salazar who recruits Rossy de Palma, an Almodovarian veteran, in a small but crucial part, and an actress previously seen in CRIMEN FERPECTO, Monica Cervera. Both have the physicalities suited for the nature of the roles they are playing -- with their androgynous faces, they actually do look like men on the verge of being female (which, actually, is what de Palma's character has already become). Both are women of the night, looking for a quick fix to give them enough cash to get through their petty existences. Only that Marieta (Cervera) suffers from narcolepsy, and when she passes out, she moves into the realms of camera! lights! action! and the world fills with pop tunes in both English and Spanish. In these musicals, she is the star at the center, she is the focus of everyone's attention and the object of total adulation.Not an original move -- it's been done before, most recently in CHICAGO where the musical numbers all occurred within Roxie Hart's mind and she didn't have to pass out for them to take place -- but 20 CENTIMETROS is a daring piece of work. It does to the genre what TRANSAMERICA started, by bringing a subject that has a long way to go still in terms of discussion and acceptance and bringing it to the spotlight (literally) under the form of a woman who is also on the down-and-out and needs that extra money to be able to "break free" as the musical number late in the film -- a Queen song Marieta performs -- points at. What TRANSAMERICA didn't do, and this movie certainly does, is flip the roles between the sexes and give Marieta the dominating power in all of her sexual encounters. It only shows how different the European position on the issue is -- where Americans still tend to emasculate men in this position in order to establish what is traditional and non-traditional, Europeans could care less about "who's on top, who's on bottom" and when Marieta falls for a hunk (Pablo Puyol) who has a penchant for being on the submissive side of her 20 centimeters (for lack of a better term), roles fly out the window real quick.However, it's here where the movie somehow fails... if both Marieta and her Man are happy with each other, her insistence on crossing the ultimate line seems a little selfish. However, having seen several documentaries on the subject of male-to-female transsexuals, their issues go much deeper than that. So it's possible to assume that both Marieta and her Guy are two people who are almost right for each other. Just not quite. At least, in this way, 20 CENTIMETROS doesn't become an exercise in schmaltzy happiness, but still -- somehow I believe it would have been even more groundbreaking to leave things as they were between the two characters (since the movie invests a wallop in establishing how right they are for each other and both actors do manage to create an intense couple) and not make Marieta so pig-headed in her quest for femininity. After all, her Guy does accept her as she is. It's too bad she cannot do the same.

Wendell Ricketts This is one of the most godawful pieces of Euro trash dreck ever to come across the pond. It makes no sense, there is no acting, there is no characterization, there is surely no motivation, and the plot is about as limp as overcooked pasta. The Spanish have been putting out some pretty bad movies lately, but this one's brow is so low you'd have to dig up the floorboards to see it. The intercutting of the so-called "musical numbers" is the only slightly charming feature of this snoozer -- and I say slightly because the choreography is repetitive and dull (about what you'd expect from a high-school production of *Grease*) and after about the third pointless "here we burst into song," you'll want to open a vein rather than sit through more camping and mugging. On a technical note: The sound on the DVD is pretty bad, but maybe that's a good point. The less you hear, the happier you'll be.