Reviews

Let me start out by admitting that the acting and the technical side of things are up to scratch, so what exactly is the problem with this movie? Well, first and foremost, there's too much of a good thing. Obviously Mikkel Munch Fals, a movie critic turned director, is very keen on making this a rather gloomy experience for everyone concerned, with various perversion in ordinary people are being examined. Everybody likes a bit of perversion, but it is soooo boring that every single male person in the movie is a pervert and an absolutely terrible human being. It took me about five minutes to realise this, and then the vie's pretty much over. New guy get's introduced, seems nice in the very beginning and then turns out to be atrocious. Repeat until bored to death.

A little bit of unfunny humour in there too. It in every Danish movie a minimum of unsexy nudity is compulsory, as is a couple of jokes. Nudity for seriousness and jokes because the directors are insecure about being serious.

Anyway, not the worst movie I've ever seen (The King Is Alive takes the cake) but it is very predictable, very much the same as any other Danish movie from the past 15 years and very unimportant.

Point given for not using hand held cameras and not having Troels Lyby play an modern sensitive guy in a woolly sweater.

So this is not another dogma-movie, but why oh why do Danish movie makers insist on the hand held camera and the grainy pictures? Does this make it more believable, do we Do reality look anything like that? Another brain fart, another artsy movie without any substance whatsoever. Only intention is trying to be high culture. And that obviously can be achieved only by emulating better and older movies that did the hand held thing first. There may have been a point to this sheet initially, but boy am I tired of the lack of imagination. Right now I'm willing to watch any crap Danish movie if the pictures are in focus. I'm terribly sorry, but making the world look like I've forgotten my contacts do not make it art! Especially not after having watched the bloody style for 15 years now.

So now for the movie itself. A story about a theater diva on a downward spiral fueled by alcohol. In itself a quite appealing setup. The main character, Stella, is supposed to be sexy, charming, troubled, exotic. Steen does not however make us believe it. It's obvious she herself wants to be all of the above, but it comes out pathetic. Overacting, ridiculous screaming and she can't seem to leave her one comic trademark behind either.

As for the story it's supposed to be depressing and dark, but nobody has the courage to make it so. It turns out rather bland instead. Does she end up murdering her children? The suspense is killing me! Well she doesn't and I don't care.

The actors do fine work for the most part, Michael Falch, even the the children, but perpetual overacting from this unfunny comedienne turned serious actor is embarrassing to say the least.

The movie is rather short though. It felt long, but wasn't. The only positive I can think of! Come on Denmark. Shake the beast that is Lars Trier and dogma movies and reinvent yourself. Because this current tendency makes me sad!

For the last couple of decades Niels Malmros has made various versions of the same story. This is not an exception. It is however way worse than the previous ones.

Acting was ridiculously poor. Especially The girl lead was truly awful. Every piece of dialogue seemed staged and theatrical. No lines were that of 15-16-17 year old students, but rather a elderly mans perception of how they are supposed to talk.

The movie is boring to the extreme. In order to counteract this - obviously the boredom issue was apparent even to the instructor - unfunny jokes are put into the script every once in a while. These made me cringe.

I do however enjoy poor movies, and this one is memorable. Enjoyable to some extent, but not intentionally so.

The movie is being televised as I write.

I simply forgot how horrible an experience I had watching it in the cinema.

The whole idea of the movie is flawed. The fact that intelligent Europeans and Americans stranded in the desert forget all concept of morals and civilization within a couple of days is laughable. The madness of Lord of the flies was longer in the making.

Details that annoy are plenty. One is the single African god-like character that mysteriously survives the horrible climate and have done so for ages without losing his mind and he seems to have no supply-problems either. Ridiculous. So too is the rescue attempt from the tour guide, an Indiana Jones look-alike, whose rescue attempt ends in tragedy and death a 5 minute walk from the hut. Then there's the choice of Lear, imposed onto the group by a guru-like joke of an artist. He reminded me of my hippie high school art teacher.

The worst thing though is Levrings choice of Lear. Obviously is an intellectual brain-fart. How that ever was going to be an pass-time is never clear to me.

Positives are few and far between. It's a beautiful movie, but that's never important.

High school intellectualism. Weird for the sake of weird. It's a complete waste of time unless you like thrashing useless art movies.