Filme da Treta

"Filme da Treta" is inspired in a previous work called "Conversa da Treta", which can be translated as "Blather" or "Foolish Talk". In fact it all begun with a radio show (with that name) where two friends, "Toni" and "Zezé", talk about their lives and their neighbourhood (located somewhere in a typical district of Lisbon!). Because of the colloquial and comic language it used to be funny. Then it passed to the stage (kind of a dialog play) and later to a TV-show. As you can see it was a success here in Portugal and the audiences applauded it…

Now, the film! "Filme da Treta" is, then, just an adaptation to the movies of this succeeded show, but it was, at least in my point of view, a regression! To be honest it was a disappointment, as I expected a lot more from it. I used to appreciate "Conversa da Treta", but now with the movie it lost all the fun!

The film pretends to be funny using all the clichés and the same kind of language used in the previous shows, but it has no plot at all, and the new characters that were supposed to add something to Toni and Zeze's adventures almost don't appear! It's almost all the movie the characters "Toni" and "Zezé" having the same blather, but this time without fun (excepting a few jokes)! This film doesn't add anything to the previous works; worse, in a certain way it can even spoil some of the work done, because it should have had some evolution in order to keep it interesting and funny!

This film is poor, very poor; I really expected more from it!

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.

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.

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!

It's a great film.

A film in which two charismatic characters discuss the Portuguese stereotype in a very funny and amusing way.

It is a film that show us varied Portuguese themes and make such good links between subjects completely different, and always in an very amusing way. A film about such diverse topics ranging from the discovery by boat of the Portuguese sailors, up to today.

Not to mention the excellent performance of the characters, that can make completely normal subjects as life after death or pornography to became very amusing subjects.

I strongly recommend all Portuguese and foreigners who master the Portuguese language, to see this movie.