Tina & Bettina: The Movie

Made me laugh multiple times. The movie is very in-touch with modern schools and trends, and takes every chance it gets to poke fun at rich-spoiled kids.

This little social satire is based on two overclass, ignorant, self-obsessed teenage characters made and played by comedians Odd Magnus Williamson and Henrik Thodesen on the late-night comedy show "Torsdag kveld fra Nydalen" on Norwegian TV2. The "girls'" video blog revolved around high-school intrigue and the importance of being from the west side of Oslo and having enough money to show for it, and the great concern was of course whether these 5-minute blog entry skits were enough to base an entire feature film on. Luckily, the screenwriters have done a good job in scaling-up Tina & Bettina, and the result is a full-blown high-school satire with a good combination of local and universal issues and features. The comedy balances quite effectively on the edge of overcooking, and to my surprise, the many music video segments work as intensifiers rather than the opposite. Fine comedy acting by Williamson and Thodesen is the icing on this remarkably tasty and creative cake.

A good idea of a sketch is not always a good idea to make a movie. An idea of making something more out of a good idea, needs a good plan, and a good manuscript. If the first manuscript isn't good enough, you'll have to make it over, or make someone else rewrite it. If something is fun for 3 minutes, it's no rules telling you can just make it longer...

It's things like this I feel like saying after watching this mess. There's loads of good people involved here, but two more years in working the manuscript would have done wonders. This never should have gone past the stage of an idea. Nevertheless, this film has done well at cinemas, especially amongst young teenagers, which the film tries to make a parody about.

And it functions fire the first 10 minutes, before it starts going down. The ground idea is good enough, and this could have made an interesting critical comment to bullying or shallowness in friendship. But when you stop laughing, the film gets boring, and very long.

There's many of the same comedians behind this, as where behind the awful Help, we're in the film business (Hjelp, vi er i filmbransjen). I'm afraid this is even worse. At least that film had a couple of moments. This film has three laughs, that even to little for one sketch. Should comedians be allowed to make movies that are not funny, or should there be punishment, or at least quarantine for making waste like this?

The only good thing here, is that the film has given bread on someone's table. The bad thing is that I was one of the people paying for it.

Tina & Bettina: The Movie is based on a mini-series on norwegian TV of the same name (minus "the movie"). It's about these two girl bloggers and their life in school. It's all going fine and dandy for them; they're the leaders of the school, but one day a new girl enters the place. Let's just say it becomes total chaos.

This movie is incredibly underrated. I mean, it's amazing how much people dislike this movie. I haven't read one good review of this film. But honestly, it's not bad.

I'm not gonna go into much detail. Let's just say that if you're at my age (13 - 15 years old), and are a fan of the show, you will probably enjoy this.

The jokes are mostly solid, although the climax of the film gets dull after a while. And this is just a personal thing, but none of the characters are "likable" in that sense. They're just assholes, all of them. Well, not ALL of them, but like 80% of them. But they're still funny.

Tina & Bettina: The Movie is definitely not the best comedy of the year, but it's still pretty good. You should give it a chance if you're curious.