Jönssonligan kommer tillbaka

The business of remakes is a very sensitive one. Especially when taking on a franchise that a great deal of the audience really cherish.

The best thing would no doubt be to time travel back to the 1980's and record more stories about Jönssonligan with the original cast and writers. But the lack of time machines makes this film the very best alternative.

The previous attempts from 2015 (Den Perfekta Stöten) and 2020 (Se Upp För) to revive Jönssonligan may have made this film project even more sensitive and risky. But with a great cast, script and a heist worthy of the band, this is clearly a setup that can be built upon in future films. And hopefully will be.

Robert Gustavsson has kept many of the ticks and manners of "Sickan" from his predecessor, but still manage to balance it with his own interpretation not to fall into an act of pure imitation. Same goes for Jonas Karlsson as Vanheden, and Anders Jansson as Dynamit-Harry.

The hardest part both to write for and to portray, is of course Doris. She is furthest away from the original character, which in a way is understandable as the 1980's Doris is quite frankly very stupid. A feature that - no matter how comic and entertaining - is not allowed on female characters in the 2020's. The writers and actress Jennie Silfverhielm does however make the absolute best of it, making Doris a bit sharper, but still comic and adorable. She is still "en underbar människa!" If you loved the original 1980's films, you will definetly like this one.

Sorry, but I have lived in Sweden for many years, but never saw the original films. So coming in with no expectations, I was very dissapointed with this film. The comedy was definitely not laugh out loud, in fact the whole film seemed somewhat childish to me. Perhaps aimed at that market.

If your not invested in the Jönssonligan earlier films, then I'm not sure this film will do much for you. For me it just wasnt funny, I felt they could have done a lot more with the plot. We ended up switching it off towards the end.

It could and should have been so much better, I'm a huge fan of Robert Gustavsson, but in this film, I'm afraid he failed to shine for me.

After all the earlier failed attempts to reboot and reimagine Jönssonligan, i finally thought that they were on the right path this time with a version that seemed close to the original. And with Robert Gustafsson as "Sickan" - who's got a lot of similarities to Gösta Ekman - how could they fail? Well, they did.

A big thing with the original cast were the kookiness and charm of each character. They were all funny in their own way. But in this movie "Sickan" is the only one who's trying to be funny, but even he falls short ..literally, since some light slap-stick were the only comedy present. The rest of the cast is just there delivering unfunny and often very cringe lines. The writer obviously have a solid list of comedic experience, but he didn't manage to implement any of it in this movie?

One painfully apparent thing about Swedish comedy is the implementation of unnecessary English words and swearing. Is that suppose to be funny and/or modern? Did someone actually use the English word "gun" for some reason?

All in all, "Jönssonligan Kommer Tillbaka" had the opportunity to be a solid return to old form, but they totally forgot the part about being funny.

For someone who has grown up with Jönssonligan since I was nine years old when the first movie was released, it is kind of hard to accept any iteration released after the last movie with the OG cast. While 'Jönssonligan spelar högt' (2000) had a somewhat sentimental value but only being 'Meh', the three movies beeing released after that has me wondering where the franchise is heading. I have not seen 'Jönssonligan - Den perfekta stöten', so cannot comment on that. While 'Se upp för Jönssonligan' (2020) was barely passable, this new release in some ways gave me a bit of hope. Mind you, it is far from great, but still a trying effort. The quirkiness and uniqueness of the OG cast is nearly impossible to replicate so I leave it at that. What this movie tried to capture I don't know. We had some very obvious throwbacks to the original movies and someone in the crew at least tried to capture some nostalgia. All characters except Robert Gustavsson were more or less forgettable trying to replicate the essence of the OG cast. Robert Gustavsson as "Sickan" did the best job in my opinion, although not being able to entirely capture Gösta Ekmans performances. Maybe it was intentional, I don't know. All things considered, he was the keeper of this movie in my opinion. When I first saw his name attached to this movie I was afraid he would bring his usual below the belt humour to the movie, but was pleasantly surprised that he didn't. Good!

The movie kept me mildly entertained, but had some serious flaws. Mainly the coup was not up to the hilarious detailed standards we are expected to get. Somewhat rushed, somewhat overlooked. Everything is modernized, and I can't blame that, but it still felt very lacking. The coup wasn't fleshed out enough to have the "Jönssonligan" stamp of approval.

In all it was a valiant effort that I can give a solid six out of ten, althought it do not encapsulate what the original gang offered us. If they ever do a follow up with the same cast, I hope they pay attention to what made the older movies in this series so memorable.

Sickan and Wall-Enberg were the only characters that somewhat resembled their original counterparts from Jönssonligan.

Dynamit-Harry, Vanheden, and Doris felt overplayed and exaggerated, losing the charm and personality that made them beloved in the classic films. Doris was never as involved in the heists as she is here, which felt out of place. Vanheden was completely rewritten into an unrecognizable and unenjoyable character. Dynamit-Harry, known for his clumsy, carefree nature, was turned into an action-driven, alert character-far from how we remember him. Doris, once warm-hearted, is now aggressive, pushy, and irritating.

The movie's pacing was uneven-some scenes felt rushed, while others seemed stretched just to pad the runtime. At times, the script appeared to lack content.

The police characters had a Beck-like tone but leaned too much into forced humor, missing the comedic style of previous Jönssonligan films.

While it was a respectable attempt, the drastic character changes made little sense, even considering the time gap since the last film. It's understandable that characters evolve, but the transformation here was too extreme.

It's a modern production, but it's so overproduced that it loses the nostalgic feeling that those of us who grew up with the originals cherished.