Vesnicko má stredisková

Czech comedy about the occupants of small village, focussed mainly on the lives of driver / odd job man Pavek and his trials and tribulations with his working mate Otik, who is rather simple. It becomes so much hassle it is decided to move Otik away to Prague.

Very gently, somewhat Tati-esque take on the many eccentric characters in the village and the trouble they get into. It is slow, gentle, often quite funny and indeed very sweet and certainly worth catching.

My review was written in May 1986 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

"My Sweet Little Village" finds director Jiri Menzel in the warm winning form of his "Capricious Summer" as well as other more recent of his pictures such as "Cutting It Short". This comedy about small-town life in Czechoslovakia is a modest but very entertaining opus, and elicited a rarely heard ovation at its conclusion upon screening in one of the smaller salles in the Cannes market.

Simple story emphasizes situation comedy and running gags as bumbling young Otik, thought by his friends and neighbors to be mentally retrded, is rejected by his older workmate, Mr. Pavel, on delivery jobs. Pavel is not the only one tired of Otik, as an influential type is working on getting the boy transferred to a job in Prague so his local house can be lucratively modernized and resold, complete with an "English garden".

There are all sorts of goofy local intrigues, such as the young married woman who is always conspiring to get Otik out of his house (one time he is sent off to catch a "must-see" Romanian film) so she can dally there undetected with her young boyfriend. The town doctor (Rudolf Hrusinsky) is forever crashing his car into almost everything in its path, and though he is sympathetic, he is given to talking his patients out of their symptoms rather than prescribing any treatment.

Using a lowkey, simple style that perfectly snatches the rural setting and unsophisticated characters. Menzel very warmly coaxes humor out of familiar material. Some of his running gags are priceless and no matter what happens, including inevitable physical violence (as in the cuckolded husband's reaction), there is no hint of malie here. Menzel very gently pokes fun at the provincialism of his countrymen, in a universal way, as when two guy discuss how the bra-less look has caught on in the West -and how glad they are it has spread as far as their village.

Cast is uniformly excellent as an ensemble, with stalwart Rudolf Hrusinsky particularly delicious as the doctor.

I don't know how many movies from the Eastern Bloc people in the US got to see during the '80s. Among the good ones were the Soviet Union's "Voyenno-polevoy roman" ("Wartime Romance" in English) and Hungary's "Jób lázadása" ("The Revolt of Job" in English).

And then there's Jirí Menzel's Academy Award-nominated "Vesnicko má stredisková" ("My Sweet Little Village" in English). This lighthearted Czechoslovakian comedy focuses on a couple of things. The main plot is the relationship between truck driver Pávek and his colleague Otík, who has trouble understanding things (it's not clear if he's merely simple-minded or developmentally disabled). But then there's also an unfulfilled wife's trysts with a veterinarian, and a teenage boy's obsession with a local teacher. Quite a bit's going on in this town.

The characters, while flawed, are shown to be well-meaning. One thing that I noticed was that the teenage boy had a shirt saying UNIVERSITY UTAH. I will forever wonder how someone in a small town in the Eastern Bloc got his hands on such a shirt. Other than that, some of the characters' hairdos mark this as an '80s movie. Not a masterpiece, but an enjoyable one. Screenwriter Zdenek Sverák, who also appears as the painter, is best known for the Oscar-winning "Kolya".

Probably worth mentioning that the R in the director's name has a diacritic, but IMDb no longer allows diacritics on consonants.

This movie is far from legendary Yugoslavian comedies, but it doesn't try to be like that. It's literally, as one review already said, a movie about a life in a little village. It's heart warming and relaxing to watch, albeit a little depressing in some ways. You won't die from laughter, but there are a few funny scenes sprinkled throughout the movie. I give it 8/10 and I recommend it. It's still by miles a better comedy than some recent movies from Hollywood who claim to be good comedies.

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.