If you see only one Finnish comedy this year, make it this genial comedy about one slacker’s overnight quest to finally get the “digibox”— digital TV converter—his wife has been asking for. Besides fitting into the slacker-comedy subgenre, it’s also a road movie. The humor is not especially culturally specific, but there does seem to be just a bit of the melancholy that hangs over a lot of Scandanavian films I’ve seen, like 101 Reykjavík, which paints winter in Iceland as a similarly dark force that dampens the soul of men, though not so much women. Beginning with the tale of a tree where five generations of men have hanged themselves is a bit bleak for a comedy, even if it happens to be told with gorgeous photography. But the hapless hero (Jussi Vatanen), traveling with his two pals and trying not to (again) disappoint his wife, brings the story to light and rather funny ending. I would have barely recommended the film but for the delightful…Finnish.
IMDB link
viewed 4/11/11 at Ritz East [Cinefest 2011] and reviewed 4/11/11
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