Wonderful Movie

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

One of my all time favorites.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

I really cannot stand all these Swedish pretentious and self-righteous movies, but I still keep watching them in hope that something good may come out of it. After all they gave us The Emigrants (Moberg) in the 70's so there still might be hope.And something good there is; quite interesting to watch these people in situations that are very believable and real, despite characters being extremely annoying, stupid and/or stubborn. The only likable character must be the teacher trying to stand up against her ignorant, anemic, moron colleagues.And yes, the camera is very static, gave me a feeling I am just an observer, even gave me a strange feeling that I peeked into these situations without them knowing or without permission. Quite nice, but I would like to see more of a plot, more resolution, that all these fragments lead to somewhere. It just stopped.

Ruben Östlund must be one of the most self important directors working in Sweden today. He is angry on Hollywood for making films people are entertained by. He wonders why his film don't speak to as many people as films about cowboys and aliens when his films are about everyday life. The answer is quite simple. Most people goes to the cinema to be entertained and Ruben Östlund's film douse not entertain. Entertainment can be achieved by many emotions, happiness, horror, sadness, thrills, chills and joy. The one emotion a director is never allowed to evoke in his audience is boredom. To bore an audience is the worst crime an entertainer can commit and Östlund commits this crime.The scenes in this film is made up mostly of single shots showing scenes in the life of a teacher, two teenyboppers, an old man, a group of drunks and a bus party. All of them fall victim to the mechanisms of the group. This would have been interesting concept but Ruben Östlund's own pretentious ideas comes in the way. Like his moronic camera angels.The camera angels are often filming really strange stuff like peoples feet or a car door. I hate to be the first to bring this up to you Östlund, but you are not Roy Andersson.The psychology of a group is an interesting subject, but you can't make a movie with just that. You need context. Come up with a story to use as backdrop to your theme. The first two X-Men movies did a great job with this.There is no plot nor character development. A film can make up for this in by brining up other stuff, like an interesting story but this is not the case of this film. Ruben Östlund summarizes the worst kind of filmmakers alive; those who don't care for their audience. Others like him are Micheal Bay, Uwe Boll and Kristian Petri to name a few.Avoid this guy, because he deserves not attention,

The influence of Gus Van Sant at his most self-indulgent is in evidence throughout this dry as dust collection of filmed scenarios. The camera doesn't move. Shots are deliberately framed in such a way that heads are cut off. The sound is ambient. The characters are shallow and uninteresting. If there were such a thing as a Swedish Dogme manifesto, Involuntary could be an example of it. As it stands, it's merely an example of how not to make a film, unless you want to limit the audience to folks who are convinced that the lack of a story and technical ineptitude are the mark of genius. It's hard to believe this was Sweden's official entry for the Academy Awards in 2010.

I recently saw this at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival. After 25 years the effects of the radiation fallout from Chernobl that drifted over Sweden are now evident as it must have affected the minds of the committee who selected this drivel as Sweden's official submission to the Academy Awards as Best Foreign Film. The chances of this being one of the five nominations are slim to none. This film deals with five different stories that have nothing to do with the other except that they all take place in Sweden and all deal with alcohol to some degree. There is a man who accidentally gets hit in the head by a bottle rocket, two school girls who get drunk, an actress on a bus trip, a teacher whom none of her peers at the school really care for and a group of young straight men who enjoy homo-erotic behavior. The film is shot from unusual camera angels that give the viewer a sense of eavesdropping in on ordinary mundane conversations. After about five minutes, this technique gets pretty old and after about 10 minutes it becomes evident that the stories are going nowhere and people start walking out of the theater. Lessons learned from the film include; if you hit yourself in the eye with fireworks you should not self-treat it but see a doctor immediately and don't be shooting off fireworks under the influence of alcohol, if you are a teenager don't get drunk and pass out, if you break something it's best to confess, if you don't seem to fit in then learn to have an interest in your co-workers or maybe look for another job and pretending to be gay is not emotionally healthy. I would give this embarrassment to the Swedish film industry a very generous 3.5 out of 10, as low as I personally go on reviews, and recommend it to no one.