blind Io

About 20 minutes into the film, when you're not that impressed by the awesome abilities of the puppeteers, you get the feeling that the story is not really going anywhere you've never been before.

The sad part of this movie is that all it has to offer is in fact the absolutely splendid work done by the puppeteers. The story has been done a thousand times before, and although is not a hindrance to do good work, it doesn't really amount to anything here in strings. If you do not know how this movie will end after you've watched the first 20 minutes then you haven't paid attention. Anders Rønnow Klarlund worked for 4 years on this movie, a little more time on the script would have made the 4 years work shine through.

Saw this movie a couple of years ago as part of a very very small film festival. I remember we where about 8 or 10 people there, and one of the participants threatent to walk out and have his movie back which kind of scared the arranger since he would loose about 10% of his income on the show. He kept saying that the guy should hold on and wait, the next movie would make everything all right. Sadly this was not so, until Dracula (The Dirty Old Man) was shown (about # 6 in the show I think out of 8). The guy who had complained was, like the rest of us, completely shocked. The completely ridicuoles dialog and everything cramped into the movie to make it appear longer, the sudden scene with no connection to the rest of the plot of older man with a young girl (probably the producer wanting to get something out of the nude girls himself, and also by far the most pretty girl in the film) and the naked women being raped by a fully dressed werewolf saved the festival for that guy complaining, completely taking back everything he had said and praising the show for being so strange he could do nothing else but love it. And the arranger saved is 10% loss.

The first season of "Nikolaj & Julie" was extremely good, well written and acted. The in the second season something went wrong. The story line became mediocre and foreseeable and the acting went the same way. Suddenly this was not about mid-thirties people trying to cope and handle each others problems in a serious, and most of all, realistic way, but about a group of very selfish and egocentric persons not caring about anything but their own agenda. On top of that, as mentioned, the story became secondhand and seemingly all inspiration has come from daytime soaps, only being a tad better do to better acting. New characters were introduced and written off as quickly as possible, and the whole socio demographic area that this show takes it place in, was broken up. The third season has begun, and it doesn't look better. Again new characters has been written in, apparently one of the lead acts has a retarded brother of whom we haven't heard of before, and Julie boyfriend apparently has have a drinking problem, which is reawakened by her when she offers him a snaps. Small problems a boosted to be the end of the world, and the big issues are forgotten form episode to episode, and it do not give one hope that it will improve at any point, it will only become worse.

At the moment of writing this, "Nikolaj & Julie" is the top most seen show on TV in Denmark, but then again other things that are not hard on the mind and ones intellect has been the highest rated shows before, Robinson (danish "survivor"), Popstars, Popstar, Big Brother and so on. The only thing that "Nikolaj & Julie" has that those shows do not is real actors, otherwise it's sometimes hard to see the difference, but then again art do reflect reality.