Just perfect...

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

The movie ended up being more interesting than I thought. I kind of felt bad for all the men and hoping that they will make it. None of them seems to be a bad person but sure has trouble finding someone closer at home. The documentary is really good at following them, their stories and giving us their thoughts.It is also nice how it shows all the different outcomes that might happen. One simply doesn't meet anyone there. Three get scammed. When it comes to the guy who seemed to love a picture and put too much hope into it I was kind of expecting it to happen. But the other two I felt pretty bad. Especially for the Australian who got married and then she stopped talking to him. Say what you want about him and how he missed clues (we can't really know it as we didn't see their whole communication, just a few minutes), but what kind of a person gets married "to keep the options open"??? Awful woman. And I must say I actually have big respect for him that he tried and that he also confronted her at the end. I hope he found someone in Australia. Just like the other ones who weren't lucky.It shows us two good outcomes. And those are actually pretty happy. One can see that the women are being genuine. Everything can happen after as well, not all marriages succeed but I hope they succeed here.So it was a good documentary showing us all sides of this dating business. As it was said the company has no control over the outcome. Just think about local online dating. How many people you meet and get disappointed. How many do you realize are wrong for you after several dates. Doing it internationally makes it even harder since one has less time to see each other in real life. So of course one can expect that it won't all work out.

BE WARNED - SPOILERSThis is an excellent exploration of a misunderstood concept. Mail order brides conjures up a lot of stereotypes. This film shows that it's not necessarily what we think it is. It follows 6 men to the Ukraine and shows the very different experiences each man has in trying to find a wife.Of the six, Bobby was perhaps the saddest. His desperation oozed out of him like pus. It was just palpable and he was, perhaps, the most unrealistic of the group. Ron, while being something of a jerk, was realistic. Robert was my favorite because he seemed to be looking for love and was fine with it if it didn't work out. It did in a big way for him though :)Michael - he was a creep through and through and so very unrealistic and delusional, it was almost shocking the lack of self-awareness.The documentary shows both sides of the story - the perspective of the men and the women. It's fascinating and absolutely worth seeing.

What do you get when you mix a group of men with incredibly narrow perspectives about male/female relationships and women from a country filled with poverty and hardship? Mostly disenchantment, depression and bruised egos - but still a very interesting television snack.Marriages happened but how can real bonding grow from such toxic seed? The most important factor to the men in this search was aesthetic, sexual appeal and that proved to be detrimental to most all of them. The men who felt scammed only found themselves in that position because they allowed superficiality to be their guide. For some reason, for most of these men, they believe that if the woman is attractive that everything else can be overcome. Sexual attraction does not an entire relationship make.This is just the tip of the ice berg though. Each one of these guys had his own "issues" that made it impossible for them to even select someone compatible for a real marriage. Eric was obviously doing everything he could to prove himself "manly" but he just came across as ignorant and insecure instead. Michael was just a pouty, delusional man-child who refused to take hints or even hear the truth if it didn't fit what he wanted to believe. Ron was in complete denial about aging and was looking for someone to live with him in that impossibility. Bobby kept trying to win a woman who fit the media's beauty ideal (Angelina Jolie) probably because he thought she would be the prize that would be evidence of his elusive self-worth. Poor Travis seemed ready but was just looking for love in all the wrong places - places that would probably require him to literally relocate, reinvent and reestablish himself in order to find a relationship of any kind.The only man in this group who seemed serious and mature enough for a real relationship was Robert.In the end, this documentary was less of a window into the Russian Bride phenomena and more a testament to sexism, outdated gender roles and delusional approaches to relationships.

First off, I have to applaud the bravery of the western men and eastern European women who agreed to be filmed during their search for a partner. It can't have been easy, knowing how they risked appearing to an audience. That aside, I think the stars of this documentary would be the first to agree that something has gone wrong in their lives that they have resorted to such unorthodox measures. Understanding the desperation and deep loneliness of the men is key to understanding how they can be deceived by both themselves and the morally bankrupt businesses and individuals that exploit that loneliness for their own aims. The documentary-makers sympathetically but astutely expose these issues, through uncompromising filming and pertinent interview questions. The question the interviewers keep returning to - what is love - is a thought-provoking one that perhaps has no satisfactory answer. I'd suggest that the men asked in the documentary revealed the extent of their disconnection from reality and self-deception with their naive and romantic answers. While viewers may not be able to say what love is by the end of the documentary, I think they'll be more confident in saying what love isn't.