Russian Pizza Blues

Wikke and Rasmussen, creators of the original tv-shows "Robin Hat", "Tonny Toupé Show", "Sonny Soufflé Chok Show", "Ronnie Rosé Show" and "Søren Kierkegaard Road Show" have added another interesting title to their CV with their feature film debut "Russian Pizza Blues". It´s an enjoyable, benign mood piece which tells several stories of passengers on an airport bus in Copenhagen. Great atmosphere and quotable dialogue make up for occasional amateurish performances and certain heavy-handed action or suspense scenes (the post office robbery being the worst offender). A distant cousin to the films of the Kaurismäki brothers and Jarmusch´s "Night on Earth", this is highly watchable, but not for all tastes.

Look for cameos from producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen as a seedy motel receptionist, magician Paul Arland as a cardplayer, and painter Mikael Kvium as a drunk stag party guest.

Mosaic of fates that in a subtle cheer cross each other during a dusk night in a poetic and picturesque Copenhagen.

Wikke and Rasmussens first - and best - full featured movie. The understated humor, the mysterious story that slowly unfolds, the feel-good of the "Steen and Steen" (Mikael and Steen) with a touch of melancholy makes this the best Wikke and Rasmussen movie ever produced and thereby one of the all-time best danish movies.

It is Jim Jarmusch's "One Night on Earth" with a slight touch of "Love actually" without the clichées. It is made in an understated Danish context with a laid back humor that is typical for Copenhagen and Wikke and Rasmussen in particular. It is all about dreams against real life's inconveniences - with the dreams winning.

Wikke and Rasmussen stubbornly claim that they are not cult, but mainstream. Perhaps that is true, but this movie is definitely cult. Bringing in the danish nuclear physicist, Holger Bech Nielsen, as television background noise is a stroke of genius and enough to make it cult.

The new Directors cut version is now (2020) available on Blu Ray and absolutely worth investing your hard earned dimes in.

Sadly the DR television series based on the same movie was re-cut to disaster. I suggest that you do not even watch that version.

This is a truely fantastic film, showing how live stories get mixed together on a summers night in magic Copenhagen. The most beautiful thing about the film is how it manages to talk about the basics of life, without stepping into the realm of cliches.

You might say it is a Danish/Scandinavian and optimistic version of the likes of Short Cuts.

This is truly the best movie ever made. Unfortunately this movie is not yet even out on DVD/BD.

Definitely a feel-good-movie, but so is everything the director duo have ever made.

The 5 stories: A Russian father and his daughter stranded in Copenhagen. A man returning from a trip to Zanzibar. A stewardess getting married. A man looking for his brother following the death of their mother. A bus driver from Zanzibar.

Their stories intertwines during one single night in beautiful Copenhagen. In the beginning of the movie they are all on the same bus from the airport. As they get of the bus, their stories are told.

To sum this movie up without spoiling it is impossible. The message of the movie is that the right time is always now, and that it always will be.