Klovn: The Movie / Klown: The Movie

Mikkel Nørgaard: Klovn: The Movie / Clown: The Movie (DK 2010) starring Frank Hvam as Frank.

Klovni – kyllä nolottaa / Clown – pinsamt.

    DK © 2010 Zentropa. P: Louise Vesth. D: Mikkel Nørgaard. SC: Casper Christensen, Frank Hvam – from a story by Casper Christensen, Frank Hvam, and Mikkel Nørgaard. DP: Jacob Banke Olesen. PD: Rasmus Thjellesen. Makeup: Louise Hauberg Nielsen. M: Kristian Eidnes Andersen. S: Henning Mortensen. ED: Morten Egholm, Martin Schade. Casting: Anders Nygaard. 

    C: Frank Hvam (Frank), Casper Christensen (Casper), Marcuz Jess Petersen (Bo), Mia Lyhne (Mia), Iben Hjejle (Iben), Lars Hjortshøj (Hjortshøj), Tina Bilsbo (Tina Bilsbo), Mads Lisby (Mads). 

    88 min. 

    Released in Finland by Bio Rex Distribution with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Anitra Paukkula / Carina Laurila. 

    DCP 2K viewed at Kinopalatsi 5, Helsinki, 13 Aug 2011.

AA: I have not seen the Danish tv sitcom Klovn (in Finland called Kyllä nolottaa), which had its original run in 2005–2009, with the same four main cast members as in the movie, reportedly similar to the US show Curb Your Enthusiasm. The premise of the movie is that Frank's girlfriend Mia gets pregnant but is not convinced that Frank is father material. She tests him by letting him take care of the ten-year-old Bo. However, Frank has agreed to accompany his best friend Casper to a canoe tour, which unbeknownst to Casper's wife Iben is also a "pussy tour" the high point of which will be a visit to a private castle-turned-brothel with a possibility of a "world tour". There is also a bus full of college girls also taking a canoe tour.

Klovn: The Movie was Denmark's most popular movie last year. It is well made and structured, and the canoe tour is a good idea to keep things moving.  Klovn: The Movie is a lowbrow farce. Lowbrow farce has been popular in the cinema since the early days, for example Charles Chaplin started with stories like this (The Star Boarder). There is also a connection with certain Laurel and Hardy films such as Blotto. Because there was little to engage me in the sex and toilet jokes of Klovn: The Movie I had a lot of time to try to figure out the secret of this film's success. I remembered Leonard Maltin's recent assessment that there have never before been so many gross toilet jokes in the cinema ("Comedy Goes Down the Toilet"). The attraction of the cinema has much to do with regression, but in a good movie it is only one of the starting-points. I remain curious about Klovn: The Movie. I would have expected more from the friendship of Frank and Casper. The wives / girlfriends are as hostile as the ones in the Laurel and Hardy films. I sense a strange misogyny and a lack of tenderness in the film, but maybe I'm misunderstanding something.

There is a digital video look in the movie.