Filme da Treta

Those who remember the comedy TV Show "Conversa da Treta" should recognize the main characters at a glance and pretty much know the sort of comedy beforehand. Those who don't will, most likely, be delighted to meet the slob/scoundrels Toni and Zézé, two life-long friends from a lower-class neighbourhood. These two will have you in stitches with their antics, both evading danger and running headlong into it, lined with funny, albeit in a nonsensical way, dialogs, spiced with mispronounced, and often plainly mistaken, catchphrases. Their tale, while having no consequence whatsoever to the world around them, has quite an epic feel, which only helps to accentuate the silliness of the comedy. Not to miss if you're a fan of the so-silly-it-becomes-funny sort of film.

This movie was quite a deception for me.

The dialogues on TV and theater were so much better. It's a hour and a half abusing on jokes about the language (mis-spelling Portuguese) together with a story that is "by all means" absurd and that's all. I know the situations around "Toni" and "Zézé" must be funny and unusual, but the script could have make more sense. But this is a reflex of our problem, here in Portugal: script writers (specially in comedy).

The fantastics Marco Horácio and Maria Rueff were misemployed, reduced to characters with no contents.

The level of humour should have been raised. Didn't happened and these two (good) characters deserve better.

I think that many people expected too much from this movie. Before I went to see it, many people told me about how poor it was and how disappointing they got after seeing it.

Well, to start, I think that people simply expected too much from this movie. We cannot expect to produce in Portugal, (a country where the cinema is mostly made to please directors artistic taste instead of the general public) a movie with the quality of the ones produced in countries like Spain, England or France.

1st, because we simply don't have the budget and 2nd, because of the reason I said above. This really was one of the very few movies I saw that was made for the public instead of the directors! It seams that the Portuguese cinema needed to have one movie with only less than 500 viewers to understand that, if we want the cinema to grow in Portugal, they have to make movies for the public and not for the directors. We simply don't have market for only the called "movies of author".

In this perspective, I think that this movie was a very good one and it's a very first step in order do start making more movies for the people! That's what I'm looking forward to see.

About the quality of the movie itself. I don't think it was bad. In fact, I founded it rather good. Of course it wasn't brilliant, but still, it was "just good". But, for now, I guess I can be happy watching a "just good" Portuguese movie in the cinemas instead of not watching any Portuguese movie at all! For that, I'm very happy with this movie!

Looking in hindsight after watching it for a 6th time in a period of 13 years one can only say it is the best Portuguese Comedy Movie ever produced. Thousands of funny remarks, alongside a character buildup that is creative and shows the character and friendship of Toni and Zezé. One might say the movie is inconsequential and is a sort of episode of their theatrical shows 'Conversa da Treta' but this movie goes beyond that: it shows them on a completely different format and playing different characters and moods of the characters. It adds more complex jokes that could only be put into context in movies. One might need to watch this movie two or 3 times before understanding all jokes and getting the deeper meaning of it (which i will not disclose), but in the end its extremely worth it, and you will laugh a lot, as it is almost impossible to not enjoy this kind of comedy. The only negative remark would be that this type of comedy would not be funny when translated or put into subtitles.

It was with high expectations I went to the nearest cinema and caught "Filme da Treta" the premiere of Toni and Zeze in the big screen.

Unfortunately "Filme da Treta" is a bit of a disappointment. The usual sketches are there, the expected jokes and situations are still funny, but this movie could have been so much more.

First, there is a set of supporting characters (specially Maria Rueff (Zeze's wife) and Zeze's friends) that are given almost no chance to speak at all. And what characters! Second, there is really no plot. All we see is a series of flashbacks, through which we should be able to understand why Zeze joined a monastery. But not even that simple goal is achieved.

Third, the jokes are all there, and, as in the TV show, are very simple and easily understandable. The problem is, in a movie, with real sets and characters (as opposed to the black cloth and imaginary characters of the TV series) the jokes lose some of their strength, there is to much "noise".

In conclusion, "Filme da Treta" had all the ingredients to be a great movie: strong main characters, diverse/funny secondary roles, good sets and photography, but ends up being really nothing more than another episode in the adventures of Toni and Zeze, as all the other TV-show episodes (but slightly worse).

One final word to all of you: after watching this, you can't help to wonder if a new TV series was made, with real sets and this wonderful secondary characters, what would the result be? Pretty amazing in my opinion.