En underbar jävla jul

Just a typical swedish christmas movie. You have your politically correct story involving a family get-together consisting of your usual ensamble of half bad actors/actresses and bad attempts at something that I presume is supposed to be "humor". I don't know why they keep making the same movie with slight variations over and over. Very boring, predictable and frankly just embarrassing in-your-face political correctness. It seems sweden stopped even trying to make good movies around the year 2000. After that, it's all just clones of either this movie or Beck/Wallander/Salander/whatever.

I think our two reviewers are a bit harsh. Yes, the film portrays some stereotypical attitudes. Yes, Ulf, is seemingly that stereotypical homophobic character. But, Ulf does have a point, as seen through the prism of his conservative upbringing and his legalistic training.

The performance of Maria Lundqvist is outstanding. Coming from Australia, and not Au fait with Scandinavian cinema and actors, I thought hers as Monica was superb.

Yes, it did get a bit schmaltzy, but, hey, this is Xmas time: how many Hollywood films cover this territory? It is a Universal sentiment, and, if it is encompassing of the "gay" community. why not? I did shed a tear. And in my book, any film that makes a 66 year old cry, has something going for it!!!!

You can recognize a U. S. comedy by the fact that nothing is realistic, that the world we are presented with consists either of pubescent adult men who do some nonsense while drunk or under the influence of other drugs, or hysterical young women for whom everything revolves around the one, great guy, preferably quarterback. European comedies are not necessarily good. But when they are good, they are simply better. I see that some don't like this Swedish film here and can understand why. For one thing, there's a lot of talk about traditional Swedish Christmas - and breaking with it - and for another, the dialogue is fast-paced and witty, so you may well miss a thing or two. Slapstick is used sparingly, it's more of a psychogram about a society that is a kind of tightrope act, sometimes tilting to one side, then to the other. I had a great time with all the politically incorrect remarks and side-swipes, and the film leaves nothing to be desired in terms of acting.

A good test of a "comedic" film is the laughter engendered in an audience. I have endured too many supposed comedies, where I have continually thought, "This isn't at all funny." I saw this film at a festival showing with about 900 people in the audience. Although the laughter was not constant, there were many, many occasions during the film, when one could not hear the lines of the actors, because there was such prolonged uproarious laughter in response to the preceding dialogue. I personally haven't laughed so much at film in a very long time.

It is a very charming Christmas story, featuring a very unusual (to an American) Christmas celebration involving extended families of two young gay men meeting for the first time. The acting is of the highest caliber. There are some pratfalls, but if they are humorous, it is not because someone slipped on a banana peel, but the circumstances leading up to the slip. Most of the humor is from the lines of the actors. Although the ending is predictable and perhaps formulaic, no audience would expect it to end a tragically, and comedy continues to the end.

The Swedish film En underbar jävla jul was shown in the U.S. with the title Holy Mess (2015). (If you go to Google Translate, you'll learn that the original Swedish title is quite a bit more colorful. "Jul" in this context means "Yule.") The movie was co-written and directed by Helena Bergström. Bergström also plays a supporting role.

This is an ensemble film, in which a dozen people gather together at the home of a gay couple for Christmas Eve. Once you know that, you can pretty much predict the plot-- homophobic parents, an aging grandmother, a surrogate mother, etc.

In a movie like this, success or failure depends on the quality of the acting. These actors are very talented and capable. In fact, they are so good that I won't try to single out any of them for special praise. Not only is each actor competent, but they play well in ensemble.

This film has a terrible 5.8 IMDb rating. It's not a great film, but it's much better than that.

We saw this movie at the excellent Little Theatre, as part of the wonderful ImageOut Rochester LGBT Film Festival. It will also work well on the small screen.

A Holy Mess is one of 22 films that had their New York State premiere, or their East Coast premiere, at ImageOut. My compliments to the ImageOut Programming Committee for their great success in bringing these films to Rochester.