Mon cher petit village

A pleasant comedy with several laugh-out-loud moments. A cross between an Abbott and Costello comedy (with roles reversed), and the drama of Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men". Well worth watching.

Many of the scenes are known, quotations got integrated into the common language.. but I have never really seen the entire movie... always just parts doing something else while the movie was going on the TV...

I do not know whether I would appreciate it if not knowing so many scenes, lacking the cultural link, or the image about village life... but I personally really enjoyed the movie!

I watched this movie for about 30 minutes, as I understand it already touched upon everything that happens in the village. One of the main characters is an autistic person, "a village idiot". I felt pain watching this person. However "authentic" the portrayal of the village in the 80s in Czechoslovakia might be, I am not sure I can feel the humor here as so many situation show relatively pitiful existence of the village idiot. Though it is great to see that the community is making an effort at helping him adapt, it is also taking advantage of him. It is the reality, but from the perspective of me, a person living in an urban setting, where various things are done to make disabled feel more empowered, the village community seems some steps behind. As portraying this condition, which can never be helped ('he either strikes or has killed himself') -- the movie is very very sad, not a comedy at all. I still gave it 4/10, because of the atmosphere of the village that it creates, and it is very interesting from historical perspective.

At the beginning I thought this might be rather arty and hard to follow, but it develops into a pleasing story of relationships in village and working life that at times is hilarious. It came out two years after Local Hero to which there appear to me to be quite a few nods.

There are good characters across the generations. The humour is witty, with some darkness and good quality slapstick. Some of the comedy was crafted in a very unexpected way that really made me chuckle and admire the writing and execution.

I felt for the pigeons.

The doctor keeps crashing his car, the lorry driver is fed up with his simpleton mate and plots to move him to Prague, the girls no longer wear bras and there's flirting, drunkenness, infidelity, and even the odd punch-up. There are hints of darker bureaucratic inadequacies (this film was made in the final years of the Communist regime), but director Jiří Menzel's loving observations of Czech village life are wryly humorous, and this is principally a gentle and affectionate paean in which nothing much happens except the ebb and flow of village life — the eternal nature of which is hinted at by the circular ending. A subtle joy from start to finish. Czech DVD has moderately reliable English subtitles.