Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy; drama / romantic comedy, UK, 2024; D: Michael Morris, S: Renée Zellweger, Leo Woodall, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Casper Knopf, Mila Janković, Hugh Grant, James Callis, Jim Broadbent, Gemma Jones, Sarah Solemani, Emma Thompson

London. Bridget Jones has two kids, Billy and Mabel, but is exhausted as a single parent ever since her husband Mark Darcy was killed in Africa four years ago. She is also irritated by the too rigid school teacher Walliker. When her friend makes a Tinder profile for her, Bridget matches with the 29-year old park ranger Roxter. At first, she is scared by the two big age difference between them, but she still has refreshing sex with him. However, after a while, Roxter "ghosts" her and doesn't answer her text messages. Daniel Cleaver, Bridget's ex-lover, helps her occasionally to babysit her kids, while she goes back to work as a TV producer. Roxter returns and admits he wanted to start something with a younger woman, so Bridget ends the relationship. At a camping trip, Bridget becomes close with Walliker, and eventually they become a couple and spend the Christmas together.

9 years after the fans settled that the "Bridget Jones" film series ended on a satisfying and worthy conclusion with the 3rd film, "Bridget Jones's Baby", the author Helen Fielding wrote this sequel that changed it, and ended up with the sentiment equivalent to the one in the sequel "Ghostbusters II"—the setting is terribly wrong, but it is still an overall good film if the viewers can tolerate it. The new setting is that, after Bridget finally found the love of her love, Mark Darcy, and settled, Bridget is all of a sudden a widow with two kids, since Mark died during a humanitarian mission in Africa four years ago. Why change this? Was this absolutely necessary? No, it wasn't. It is misguided and distorted, removing Darcy to, once again, for the 4th time, have Bridget again go hunting for romance and love in life, even though at her age, this feels a bit of a stretch at this point. Nonetheless, this paved the way for a story about letting go of deceased people and still trying to live on in the world. The jokes are thin and spread between long pauses, as the more somber direction takes over. Everything is kind of more depressive and gloomy. 

The character of Bridget Jones is actress Renee Zellweger's lifetime role, a testament of how endearing she managed to create such a loveable persona that stayed in the viewers' heads permanently, but her comeback to play her again is a bit off this time around, maybe because the authors did not conjure up some especially comical bits. The only two scenes where Bridget Jones is allowed to truly be Bridget Jones again is the one where she exits the elevator to do a job interview, there is a poster of two women on the wall, so Bridget imitates the pose of one of the women standing with hands on her hips, smiling in an irresistibly charming way; and the one where she holds an improvised interview with the teacher in the classroom, to show kids what her job of a TV producer is. One wishes there were more of such genuinely charming scenes. Some jokes are nice (Mabel says to her school teacher: "I have a new daddy, his name is Roxter, and he always gives mommy a new hairstyle in the morning!"), but the entire last third, "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy" is a drama. A very emotional moment appears when Bridget visits Daniel (Hugh Grant) in the hospital: "The point is, Bridge, how have I arrived at this point in my life without kin? How could I possible be kinless... So lucky you Jones. Makes one realize one's own mess ups... of the glory of what might have been." This helps Bridget realize that, despite all her problems and trials of being a parent, she still has it better in life than Daniel. The "plot twist" ending feels unearned and out of nowhere, ending the film series on a shaky note, but also sends a message that all our parents, grandparents, and grand-parents were also probably clumsy, unsure, imperfect, and in doubt, but still managed to raise generations of children.

Grade:++

Europa Report

Europa Report; science-fiction, USA, 2013, D: Sebastián Cordero, S: Christian Camargo, Anamaria Marinca, Michael Nyqvist, Daniel Wu, Karolina Wydra, Sharlto Copley, Embeth Davidtz

Commander William Xu, pilot Rosa Dasque, science officer Daniel Luxembourg, marine biology scientist Katya Petrovna, engineer James Corrigan and chief engineer Andrei Blok are six members of Europa One, a spaceship launched to explore Europa, Jupiter's moon. A solar storm causes a short circuit and breaks off communication with Earth. Corrigan goes outside to fix it, but gets hydrazine on his spacesuit and thus isn't allowed back inside as to not contaminate the spaceship, so he drifts out in space and dies. The mission lands on Europa and drills on its ice surface, finding evidence of microbiological life. Katya disappears below the ice. A malfunction crashes their lander back on Europa. The crew dies. The last survivor, Rosa, sends the video recordings back to Earth, showing how a black octopus-like creature attacks from the sea, before the lander falls through the ice.

Independent science-fiction film "Europa Report" embodies several issues with space movies which are often incompatible with the classic three-act structure of character arc. "Europa Report" has some gorgeous scenes of space travel, but is more suitable for astronaut fans than for universal cinema lovers: all its characters are one-dimensional and reduced to only being formal. People more inclined towards space travel and exploration will thus find it more interesting, since some moments of space really are brilliant, for instance the point-of-view of Corrigan in his spacesuit, drifting away from the Europa One spaceship, seen as a distant object in the dark, or the fascinating scene of Katya making ice samples on the surface of Europa, observing Jupiter in the sky, and an especially interesting perspective here is that her face is only shown from a close-up of her eyes while she is in her spacesuit. Equipped with amazing visual effects, and crafted as some sort of "found footage" film depicting from video recordings of the space mission, "Europa Report" disappoints a bit in a few illogical moments; the bizarre ending which feels unexplored and too abrupt, in a strange and unearned plot twist; and is overall too sterile, cold and grey to engage on a higher level. Yes, astronauts are supposed to stay focused on their mission and "turn off" their emotions and private neuroses or problems, but a film needs to show more color, versatility and ingenuity, since in this edition it does tend to exhaust the viewers' goodwill in the last third. 

Grade:++

Fuss

Frka; crime drama / road movie, Croatia, 2024; D: Svebor Mihael Jelić, S: Kristina Jovanović, Sven Latinović, Antonia Mrkonjić, Luka Vondrak, Vedran Dakić

Osijek. Nika, a waitress, secretly smuggles drugs in her bicycle for gangster Petar. However, one night, someone steals her bicycle while went to a kiosk. Nika informs Petar she thus lost his drug shipment, so he demands a compensation: she has the entire night to collect money from people who have a debt towards Petar. Nika, her friend Luka, who came back after studying in Zagreb to be a dentist, and Sara, thus drive in a car and go from place to place to try to collect the money. The first debtor, Voki, is stoned at a night party, doesn't have the money, but decides to join them. They meet other characters, like police officer Marin, but even he claims he has no money. They steal a backpack from four hooligans who owe money, and they now pursue them. Petar's men kidnap Luka to put pressure on Nika. She demands to see him, and then gives him just a small amount of money they all collected between themselves. Petar accepts, releases Petar, and flees. The four hooligans catch up to them and one of them stabs and kills Voki, before they flee.  

Svebor Mihael Jelic's second feature length film, after "Zagreb Equinox", is this independent crime road movie about four people on an odyssey to collect money from debtors for a gangster, set during only one night, but a one which feels little more than just solid. The locations of Osijek are refreshing, and the main actress Kristina Jovanovic is very good as the protagonist Nika, but the whole screenplay is written almost like on autopilot, in a completely routine and standard way, without any memorable moments. Some exceptions do show up here and there, for instance the surreal scene of the "stoned" Voki imagining seeing five versions of himself, dancing in front of the police station, but "Fuss" needed more of such moments. The bizarre thing is that the story is divided into five episodes, each of which just end in the same anticlimactic way—the debtors claim they don't have the money. Chapters for each segment are bombastically introduced, such as "Police officer Marin", but then it is just a trivial episode of said Marin smoking outside the police station, chatting with Nika and her friends, and telling them he doesn't have the money. Since all of them end the same way, 2-3 could have been either cut to simply shorten this whole thing, or rewritten so that they offer something differently or more creative. A rare human moment appears when Nika's friend Luka simply tells her he wants to talk to her outside of the car, and then admits he doesn't want to participate in this night journey anymore, but she implores him since she doesn't have anyone else, which softens his heart and changes his mind. The finale is strange, with an abrupt, almost "interrupted" ending, and the dialogue is stale, yet the authenticity and depiction of Osijek's mentality was well established.

Grade:++

Bedazzled

Bedazzled; fantasy comedy, UK, 1967; D: Stanley Donen, S: Dudley Moore, Peter Cook, Eleanor Bron, Raquel Welch

London. Stanley, a loser who works as a cook and is afraid to ask waitress Margaret, in whom he is in love with, out for a date, accepts to sign a contract in which he sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for 7 wishes.  However, each wish Stanley makes is deliberately twisted by the Devil, to always find a loophole as to never fulfill it to the fullest: Stanley wishes to be more articulate, and speaks fluently with Margaret, but she still doesn't find him attractive; he then wishes to be rich and married to Margaret, but in this version she still finds him unattractive and has an affair with another man; he then wishes they were married, living in a house with two kids, but the Devil arranges that she is married to the Devil, and having an affair with Stanley just causes her grief... Ultimately, Stanley wishes he would just get his old life back. The Devil allows him to burn his contract, nullifying everything. Stanley speaks to Margaret and asks her for dinner, but she declines.

The 2nd out of three films in which the "Not Only... But Also" TV-comedy duo Dudley Moore and Peter Cook starred in (the other two being "The Wrong Box" and "The Bed Sitting Room"), "Bedazzled" is a cult comical re-telling of "Faust", i.e. the concept where a loser sells his soul to the Devil to gain something from life, in this case seven wishes. Moore and Cook have that comic chemistry and effervescence, and several of their dialogue is comical and clever ("You see, a soul's rather like your appendix: totally expendable"). One joke is pretty unusual, as the Devil sends a pigeon to defecate on a man walking on the street, hoping to thus create two negative sins for the price of one: spite by the pigeon, and anger by the man. However, the pacing is terribly problematic, as the movie slows down and loses that inspiration in the second half, which becomes more lackluster than energetic, lost in several unnecessary episodes. Too much babble, too little spirit in the second half. Likewise, some of the deliberate misinterpretations of Stanley's wishes by the Devil are sometimes fun, but also sometimes forced and contrived (for instance, Stanley wishes to be with Margaret, without other men, far away from the city, so he is transformed into a nun (!) with Margaret in a monastery). Eleanor Bron is charismatic as Margaret; Raquel Welch is effective as Lust; whereas one philosophical line is a refreshing merit, the one where the Devil says that God doesn't want to interfere in people's lives due to freedom of choice, which leads to Stanley giving a sharp reply ("Freedom of choice?! What sort of choice did I have about where I was born? And what size I was? And what awful job I landed myself in? If we really had a freedom of choice, we should be able to decide who our parents are, what we look like and everything!").  

Grade:++

Blind Chance

Przypadek, art-film / drama, Poland, 1981 / 1987, D: Krzysztof Kieślowski, S: Bogusłav Linda, Tadeusz Łomnicki, Zbigniew Zapasiewicz, Marzena Trybała, Bogusława Pawelec

Łódź. Witek is pressured by his father to study medicine, but one day receives his father's phone call: "You don't have to do it". Later, his father dies in the hospital. At the train terminal, Witek runs to catch a train... 1st story: Witek boards the train and meets Werner, a Communist who sends him to Adam, a high ranking official. Witek becomes part of the Communist Youth and is sent to end a standoff at a drug addict clinic, where the drug addicts locked three doctors in a cage. Witek frees the doctors and is promoted. He meets his first love again, Czuszka, but she is arrested by Adam for distributing banned books about Polish independence... 2nd story: Witek misses the train, bumps into a the railway guard, is arrested and sent one month of community service, where he meets anti-Communist Marek who acquaints him with a priest. Witek starts a relationship with Werka and becomes religious. But the Communists raid Marek's printing office, and he blames Witek... 3rd story: Witek misses the train, but meets Olga. They get married and have a child. He becomes a doctor. Witek boards a plane to a medical conference in Libya, but his plane explodes.

It is peculiar that Krzysztof Kieslowski released a film about a protagonist going through three different variations / possible outcomes in life, yet was surpassed by later films which improved said concept: Dormael's "Mr. Nobody", Tykwer's "Run Lola Run" and Howitt's "Sliding Doors". The reason for that is that this triple hypothetical outcome is fascinating as a concept, but Kieslowski directed it here in a too sterile, grey, underwhelming and all-around routine way, with overlong running time and monotone dialogue. "Blind Chance" thus works only on the level of the concept, but not on the level of execution, yet still poses some thought-provoking, philosophical questions—would all of our lives have unraveled completely differently if one defining moment had played out differently? Do people have control of their life, or are they pawns in the grand game of determinism, fatalism and chance? Determinism is the obvious in the outcome of all three different variations—even though the protagonist Witek goes into three vastly different directions (in the 1st story, he becomes a Communist; in the 2nd story he becomes religious; in the 3rd, he is apolitical, non-religious, refusing any ideology), all three end up in a tragedy. Even more unsettlingly, just one random encounter with someone who played an influence on him, determined if Witek would become either this or that or neutral, implying that the whole history of each country could have gone differently, depending on who had more influence on the populace. The three different variations of Witek running through the terminal to try to catch the train are directed each in their own way, with different details (Witek passes a lady who drops a coin, a random man picks it up and orders himself a beer, but Witek then either spills his beer or stops to go around him, depending on each story), but overall, the film simply lacks more imagination and creativity.

Grade:++

Green Card

Green Card; romantic comedy, USA / Australia / France, 1990; D: Peter Weir, S: Andie MacDowell, Gérard Depardieu, Bebe Neuwirth, Gregg Edelman, Robert Prosky

New York City. Quid pro quo: American Brontë accepts to marry Frenchman Georges for a short fake marriage. He will receive the American Green Card, while she will receive her dream apartment with a big garden which is only leased to couples. However, during a routine interview of two Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officers, Georges mistakenly calls Brontë "Betty", and thus a new, more elaborate interview is scheduled. Georges and Brontë do not like each other that much, but now have to spend some time actually living together in the apartment and learn more about each other to pass the test. During the second, separate interview, Georges goofs again by forgetting the name of Brontë's face cream, and thus confesses everything. He is about to be deported, but Brontë has fallen in love with him.

Australian director Peter Weir's 4th American film is seemingly his own contemplation about the problems of US immigrants trying to get a chance to start a new chapter in life there, presented in the form of a romantic comedy about an arranged marriage which was supposed to be fake, but where the couple falls in love with each other in the end. "Green Card" is not among Weir's best films: the screenplay is thin and with a rather hard-to-believe motivation of the heroine Brontë (would a woman truly set-up an arranged marriage with a stranger just to get an apartment with a garden? Couldn't she just have asked a friend to pretend, for instance her lover Phil?); Gerard Depardieu (before he went crazy) is good in dramatic moments, but simply has no comic timing; the ending is unsatisfactory; whereas Weir has no more creative lift-offs in directing. Nonetheless, Andie MacDowell is excellent in the leading role as Brontë, sweet and charming, whereas the movie is refreshingly set-up as an intimate, quiet story about two people learning about each other, allowing for subtle emotionality. "Green Card" is simple and humane, staying true to Weir's vision, and offers a good meditation on communication between two different cultures, advocating that good people can be found in every society, despite their differences: a cure for xenophobia and anti-immigration perspectives.

Grade:++

Threads

Threads; disaster film, UK, 1984; D: Mick Jackson, S: Karen Meagher, Reece Dinsdale, David Brierley, Rita May, Jane Hazlegrove, Paul Vaughan (voice)

Sheffield. Ruth and Jimmy get intimate in a car. A few months later, she is pregnant, so they decide to get married and rent an apartment. However, a more pressing problem appears in the news: the US staged a coup d'état in Iran, after which the Soviet Army entered into said country. The American and Soviet soldiers exchange fire, resulting in a nuclear attack. This leads to a domino effect, and Sheffield prepares for the worst, advising people to buy food and prepare shelters, while a crisis commission is established. A nuclear war erupts, and the Soviets target a NATO base near Sheffield with an atomic bomb, causing mass destruction. 17 million people die in Britain, the nuclear fallout causes dark clouds during summer. Jimmy is never found, while Ruth and her family manage to survive and emerge from the shelter. People fight for food in the sparse food centers. Ruth gives birth. 13 years later, as the country is being rebuilt, Ruth dies from radiation, while her daughter lives on. 

"Threads" is one of those depressing movies you never want to see, but once you start watching it, you have to see it to the end. Produced by the BBC, this film depicting the effects of a nuclear war in Sheffield was apparently so effective that many viewers were traumatized after its TV broadcast in Britain. As the title already hints at, the modern world is interconnected through invisible threads, and even though one event may happen in one part of the world, its consequences may affect the other part—this is illustrated via a close-up of a spider weaving a web, as the narrator explains: "Our lives are woven together in a fabric. But the connections that make society strong, also make it vulnerable." The story has no main character (the top-billed Karen Meagher, who plays Ruth, has barely 10 minutes of screen time), as it instead focuses on a sort of collective view on society during the apocalypse, consisting out of numerous episodes, but all of them paint a bigger picture that perfectly encapsulates the dread of the Cold War. The budget is limited, and thus its scale is kind of held in boundaries, but the suggestive close ups and still frames manage to conjure up a solid bluff.

The director Mick Jackson (who later directed such American comedies as "L.A. Story" and "Clean Slate") depicts the story in a clinical, concise, cold manner, almost as a documentary, building uncomfortable suspense through little details (people panic buying in a store; Jimmy's friend trying to persuade him to flirt with a girl in a pub before his wedding, saying: "If we're out on a carpet, might as well go out with a bang!"; a TV announcer advising people to wrap a corpse in "polythene, paper, sheets or blankets" and "label the body with name and address"). After the nuclear attack some 48 minutes into the film, seen as a mushroom cloud above the rooftops of the city, "Threads" becomes even more dark and depressing, with several shocking, disturbing images (black, vaporized corpses lying around a ruined building; people throwing up from radiation poisoning; the pregnant Ruth lamenting how her fetus has no future...). The rest of the film depicts the effects of survivors who continue living in this post-apocalyptic landscape in the rural area, suffering from famine, deprivation, up to reconstruction efforts. "Threads" is a bitter warning of how precious civilization is, and how humanity is always only one big disaster away from losing all of its progress and falling back into barbarism and existential hardship. It could go in a double-bill with Murakami's similar film "When the Wind Blows" and Masaki's "Barefoot Gen" depicting the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Grade:+++

The Wrong Box

The Wrong Box; comedy, UK, 1966; D: Bryan Forbes, S: Michael Caine, Peter Cook, Ralph Richardson, Dudley Moore, Nanette Newman, John Mills, Tony Hancock, Peter Sellers

London, 19th century. Families of 20 boys invested a 1,000£ each into a collective tontine, i.e. a lottery, but only the last survivor will receive the wealth. 60 years later, 18 of them are dead, except for elderly brothers Masterman and Joseph Finsbury. Upon hearing the news from Masterman's grandson Michael that Masterman is on his deathbed, Joseph's relatives Morris and John decide to travel with Joseph there, hoping to finally cash in on the tontine which is now worth 111,000£. After a train crash, Morris and John spot a corpse wearing Joseph's coat and mistakenly assume he died, so they devise a plan to feign Joseph is still alive, until Masterman dies so they inherit a fortune. They ship the corpse in a box, but it mistakenly gets delivered to Masterman's home, where Michael assumes he killed Joseph, so he hides the corpse. After a lot of misadventures, it turns out Joseph is alive, and that the corpse is from a serial killer, so a police inspector offers Michael a reward for eliminating the criminal.

The film adaptation of the eponymous novel by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne, "The Wrong Box" is a funny black comedy about a battle for inheritance, with a lot of wacky, sometimes almost burlesque jokes and slapstick, augmented by the talent of co-writer Larry Galbert. However, some parts work better than the others: the supporting characters of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore as the clumsy relatives Morris and John are wonderfully funny; Peter Sellers, who appears in two scenes as the alcoholic, cat-infested slob Dr. Pratt is hilarious ("Well, it'll cost you five shillings". - "Price is no object". - "Right. Ten shillings, then!"; he even puts a "seal" on a document using a back of a kitten pressed onto the paper); but the leading actor Michael Caine either has no sense for comic timing or his jokes were underwritten, and is thus only mildly amusing by contrast. Several jokes among the supporting crew are highly comical—for instance, after two trains collided, Morris exits the wagon with his pants torn, revealing his underwear, so a conductor with an eyepatch addresses him: "Sir, I didn’t lose my right eye in the Indian mutiny to have my left eye offended by the youths of England standing around with their arses hanging out!" The way 18 of the men fighting for the inheritance fortune are killed in the opening act is sometimes highly comical (in one episode, a woman throws a bottle of champaign to "baptize" a new ship, but misses, and the rope swings the bottle back, as it flies and hits the face of one of the beneficiaries), and some sight gags are creative (after failing to kill his brother in the bedroom, Masterman throws a vase with flowers at Joseph descending down the stairway, but the vase misses him and only the flowers fall on his head, which Joseph thinks is meant as an apology from Masterman). It is a pity the last third is a bit overstretched and too chaotic, exhausting itself with just situations of misunderstandings, instead of also adding other kind of jokes, which would have improved the film's impression.

Grade:++

What Dreams May Come

What Dreams May Come; fantasy drama, USA, 1998; D: Vincent Ward, S: Robin Williams, Cuba Gooding Jr., Annabella Sciorra, Max von Sydow, Jessica Brooks Grant, Josh Paddock

Pediatrician Chris Nielsen and his wife, painter Annie, are shocked when their two kids, Ian and Marie, die in a car crash. Some time later, Chris also dies in a car crash in a tunnel. However, his soul is transferred to heaven, in the form of Annie's paintings, and guided by Albert. He meets a woman dressed as a flight attendant, and it turns out she is Marie. However, Chris finds out Annie committed suicide and is now in a form of mental hell, so he goes with Albert and The Tracker to this dark underground to save her. It turns out Albert is actually Ian. Chris encounters Annie in a freaked version of their house, but she cannot recognize him and acts psychotic. His love manages to wake her up and they get to heaven. After that, they are reincarnated as children back on Earth.

"What Dreams May Come" is one of the those films that are almost impossible to grade because they are so weird and unable to be pinned down, defying any category. Based on Richard Matheson's eponymous fiction book, it is one of several experimental films where comedian Robin Williams occasionally risked to star in, outside of mainstream. Its story dwells on human (semi-religious) subconscious wishful thinking that good people who died tragically will somehow be compensated, revived in afterlife, and reunited with their loved ones in a better place. Here, it is shown as a heaven without God. The director Vincent Ward excels in stunning crystal-clear cinematography, wonderful colors and visual style, but stumbles drastically in banal melodrama, stiff dialogue and underwritten storyline. The opening 5 minutes of the film, for instance, where Chris and Annie first meet, should have been either elaborated more to make these characters more alive or simply cut, since in this edition they are stuck in an awkward middle. The first 20-minutes and last 45 minutes of the film are wasted—the two car crashes, funeral and grief scenes in the opening act are too melodramatic, without a sense for being more subtle; whereas the whole third act, where protagonist Chris travels to hell to save his wife, is depressive-grey nonsense, a patchwork hard to digest. The only truly good part is the middle 30-minute segment where Ward shows a lot of imagination in creating Chris in a colorful world of heaven: the scene where Chris jumps from a cliff and then runs manically fast across a field of red flowers, roadrunner-style, is almost therapeutic. The idea that Chris meets his deceased dog again there is touching, whereas the reveal of true identities of two characters there is a genuine surprise and delight. "What Dreams May Come" is an uneven patchwork, unable to find a balance, but its "free" structure is almost its own unique trait, whereas Williams has one genius humorous scene: in the clinic, Chris puts photos of Annie's paintings on the medical whiteboard next to an MRI scan.  

Grade:++

Day of the Wacko

Dzień świra; black comedy, Poland, 2002; D: Marek Koterski, S: Marek Kondrat, Janina Traczykówna, Andrzej Grabowski, Michał Koterski, Joanna Sienkiewicz, Monika Donner-Trelińska

"Every morning I'm afraid to open my eyes. I have absolutely no idea what to do with the oncoming day." Adas Miaucznyski is sick and tired of his life. He lives alone in his apartment and wants to write poetry, but is constantly interrupted by the noise outside, either from construction workers or his neighbor playing Chopin too loud. He works as a poetry teacher in a high school, but his lecture is interrupted by someone making a farting sound. His salary is too low, his mother does not listen to him and only talks about her soup, his teenage son is confused, his ex-wife hates him. Adas boards a train to the beach and lies there to rest. A dog, seagulls and punks disrupt him, so he dreams of his first love, Ela. In the evening, he returns to his apartment and goes back to bed.  

Voted in a 2 0 2 5 local national poll as one of the 13 best films of Polish cinema up to that point, the 6th film featuring the director Marek Koterski's fictional character of Adaś Miauczyński, "Day of the Wacko" is also considered the cinematic highlight of this grumpy persona on the screen, a black comedy that seems like a blend of Melvin Udall from "As Good as It Gets", Travis Bickle from "Taxi Driver" and James Joyce's novel "Ulysses", featuring 24 hours in the life of the magnificently misanthropic, obsessive-compulsive disordered, cynical and all-around miserable anti-hero. Despite a simple story that only features Adas complaining 90% of the time, "Day of the Wacko" is able to be engaging, interesting and quirky throughout, thanks to little details, creative ideas, the director's interventions, and especially the sharp dialogues which offer mercilessly honest observations about life. Adas is both a hilarious and a tragic figure—he represents people living on the margins, ignored or shunned by others, and the only thing he can do is rebel verbally. Several scenes illustrate his state: he tries to teach teenagers poetry in high school, but only one girl truly looks at him and listens—until, in a twist, it is revealed she was just wondering why he is wearing a medical bandage on his forehead. He looks at his mail and thinks: "Is there anyone lower than me on this God-forsaken planet?"  

In one scene, he is arguing from his window with a woman and her dog outside: "The dog is shitting right beneath my window!" - "It's only a dog." - "So what? Does a dog shit less shitty shit than a person?!" Since the woman does not pay attention to his complaints, he later goes to her residential building and defecates in the bushes right next to her window: "The freedom of one cannot infringe the freedom of other!" Adas has strange OCD behaviors: he fills his coffee cup full, carries it on a plate to his couch, and then pours the spilt coffee from said plate back into the cup. He also has a weird move where he "adjusts" his lower pants to sit comfortably. When he goes to a train compartment, numerous strange people go to sit next to him, as he wonders: "Maybe I attract the crazies". The height of satire is reached in two fictional scenes: one near the beginning of the film (a nationalist holding a speech on TV with a flag of Poland drawn on his forehead), the other near the end (the cult moment of a real "Polish prayer" where dozens of people pray on the balconies of a building: "Father, Son, and Holy Mary! Let me see my neighbor buried! He is not a friend of mine... May his roof come caving in! ..."). But behind all these cruel comments, Adas hides a vulnerable side, best expressed in his long monologue some 63 minutes into the film: "Life didn't work out for me. I wasted it... And the thought that my son will end up as unhappy as I am breaks my heart!" "Day of the Wacko" is a bitter protest against injustice in life in general, against any institutionalized "pointless existence". Is there a way out? Is there a possible world where everyone is happy? Can there be an ideal life impossible to waste? That the film poses such universal questions about indifferent modern society which creates such "dead end" cases is already impressive enough.

Grade:+++