melsen

This German cable TV movie is quite excellent, good enough to have been a theatrical release even. Baumeister gives one of her best performances, totally believable as the now grown up victim of parental child abuse bit by bit coming to understand what she went through, but finding so difficult to say - and what her own young daughter may be going through in the same family household where she is in custody. Baumeister's terrific transformation will get under your skin. Sat1, and all the other German (cable/national) networks for that matter, really ought to release all their Baumeister TV movies on DVD knowing that she's one of Germany's most popular actresses. Really beyond me why they don't, given that these 1990s and 2000s productions so rarely have another showing on TV.

I've seen this film now 3 or 4 times over the last 14 years or so, and everytime I'm amazed how bad it is and embarrassed that I'd forgotten and watched it again. It's bad filmmaking from start to finish, very sad when you consider who the director is. I can't for the life of me understand why Friedkin made this film, must've payed nicely but it's got "TV-movie" written all over it. The script is utterly bad, I'm sure Friedkin must've known because he doesn't seem to invest anything in the direction, it's completely flat and uninvolving save for the (thankfully) lack of music. The lovely Seagrove (ooo', British accent, scaaary villain) seems uninterested as Camilla while ex-Bond girl Lowell (sporting a terrible haircut) just stands around doing absolutely nothing pretty much throughout the entire film. Brown is probably best, giving it his all with a character as dumb as they come. Some other fine actors are wasted; Ferrer and Randle are seen in two short scenes, and Berkley in one - alright, so he was a bit-part player back then but still. The different babies playing the todler are given a rough-and-tumble time, snatched out of hands, pushed, and thrown around. This film is just a mess, it's boring, no sense of timing, badly paced and constructed. It's supposed to be a horror film, but it lacks the two all important ingredients - atmosphere and suspense.

"Money, power, lust - and mud !", such reads the tagline of "Polle Fiction". Don't believe a word when people tell you this movie is bad - it's great !. Forget all those awful looking unbearable Danish films of late in the so-called Dogme style, "Polle Fiction" is quite simply the greatest comedy to ever come out of Denmark. It may be based on a series of Danish TV commercials (the movie is kept in the same style), but you forget this as you watch it. The filmmakers have succeeded in giving it the feel of a real movie. Yes, it's sleazy slapstick of the ultra offensive kind and the story is paper-thin, but so were many movies years ago and people still flocked to see them. If you're one of those who believe yourself to be a serious film fan and this silly stuff is below you, and that movies in general have changed for the better and so forth, ie. all movies today need be "intelligent" for you to (think you) enjoy them, then you really have a problem with not only humour but movies in general. "Polle Fiction" (the title is a playoff on "Pulp Fiction", obviously) is somewhat related in spirit to over-the-top type crazy and violent British TV sit-coms like "Bottom" and "The Young Ones", admittedly nowhere near as brilliantly written as those TV shows, but undoubtedly inspired by the mad antics of Rik Mayall & Co. The story is simple: the one good guy in the movie (in the whole town really), Polle, is constantly bullied by his "friends" at work, Heino and Jøgge, and one day he has a gruesome accident resulting in him being scalped by the giant tube they use to suck up muddy waste - that's their job, you see. It's also a love story, believe it or not. The acting, by mostly unknowns, is superb and there's a rich gallery of goofy characters; the beer drinking insane Heavy Metal and '80s German pop music crowd the ever-taunted Polle hangs out with, a vile sexist/racist/rapist driving-instructor (!), the Turkish immigrant pizza owner, a single mother (who's a stripper) with her two incredibly annoying kids, and the nutty local DJ who plays all that terrible music. Apparently the story takes place in the '80s but it might as well be today. The action is based solely in the tiny village of Snave in Denmark, and the humour is very "local" as are (obviously) the dialects. If this movie ever gets a foreign release (I've heard rumours it may) many of the funny bits will be lost in the translations, but it'll still be hilarious. "Polle Fiction" is a nice surprise, and a cool breeze in the overrated Danish movie landscape which has grown accustomed to awards and unworthy praise lately, alas, thinking too highly of itself. Let's hope there will be many sequels !.