During a flight from Frankfurt, a group of gangsters drugs and kidnaps Samantha, the daughter of rich American Marlon Juvett, and escapes from the plane via parachutes in Romania. They hand Samantha over to another group of gangsters, who then kill them in a car explosion. An ordinary peasant, uncle Marin, arrives for a visit to Constanta, so his nephew Gogu arranges for him to stay at a hotel room reserved for Marlon. When Marlon arrives with a briefcase containing a million $ to pay for the ransom of the gangsters holding Samantha, it turns out he looks identical as Marin, and their briefcases switch often, causing chaos. Finally, Marlon persuades Marin to help him. In the meantime, Samantha escapes from the gangsters and returns to Marlon. The gangsters kidnap Marin, thinking he is Marlon, but Marin makes them all drunk, so the police and an inspector arrest the gangsters.
"Uncle Marin, the Billionaire" unexpectedly became the highest grossing Romanian film of the 20th century, with over 14,600,000 tickets sold at that country's box office, gaining an almost mythical reputation in Romania, but outside of its home country, it still feels below all the hype, rarely managing to be something more than just mildly amusing. A peculiar pastiche of American screwball comedies and Romanian mentality, this film also carries some of their clichees revolving around the concept of a comedy of mistaken identity, since the main actor Amza Pellea plays both the simplistic peasant Marin and the American billionaire Marlon—it suffers from forced set-ups, contrived coincidences and occasionally spasmodic situations, whereas not all jokes ignite. However, there is still enough of good moments here to be found that are surprising, and they arrive swiftly thanks to the elegent directing by Sergiu Nicolaescu, who usually directed serious movies.
In one of the best jokes, Marin is annoyed by a fly in his hotel room, so he tries to hit it with his hand, but instead pounds the top of the TV set which just turns off (after it was previously turned on by a pounding in the first place) and then hits the fly standing on the button to call the room service, a maid (as Marin comments: "Her mind is as short as her skirt"). In another visual gag, Gogu chases Marlon across the hotel hallway, finds a door locked, so in order to try to break it, he runs a few steps back to gain momentum, but goes too far and instead falls down a shaft on the other side of the wall, landing (again) in the basement with the dirty laundry. And in a commotion at a crowded night club, Marin's wife Veta mistakes Marlon for Marin and starts attacking him for dancing with another woman, which goes so far that Veta at one point walks to the singer, tells him: "Shut up!", takes his microphone away (!) and uses it to say: "Marin, stop! You can't get away from me!" The car and motorcycle chase sequences at around 49 and 54 minutes into the film, respectively, were inserted for more dynamic charge, but while it is amusing watching motorcycles driving across a beach full of tourists, they don't quite translate into humor. Overall, "Uncle Marin, the Billionaire" is a fun and relaxed light comedy, creating problems and twists, but in the end, just like in the works by Moliere, everything is resolved with a relieved gusto.
Grade:++
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