Thursday 28 August 2014

The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared.


The retirement home is arranging a birthday party for Allan Karlsson, who has reached the grand age of 100! Even a very large birthday cake with the correct amount of candles can’t really raise Allan’s enthusiasm for a celebration. So this grand old centenarian climbs out his window and makes his escape, accidentally taking another mans suitcase with him on a bus journey to a nearby village. He befriends the ex stationmaster and the pair discover that the suitcase contains a very large amount of drug money. This discovery sets in motion an adventure that involves the police, a dangerous biker gang, a mature student and an elephant along with its female keeper! During this journey we also learn, using flashbacks and a voice over narration, that Allen is an explosives expert and throughout his eventful life has been involved in some of the most important events of the 20th century and has meet many of the powerful players in these events including Truman, Stalin, Franco and Einstein. 
 
The mature student, the ex stationmaster and the 100 year old man.

This best selling debut novel by Jonas Jonasson condenses into a very engaging and quirky Swedish farce. The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (2013) is directed by Stockholm born Felix Herngren and stars 50 year old Robert Gustafsson a very well known Swedish comedian and one of the main stays of a comedy group called ‘Killingganet’. According to many UK film critics this movie is not a laugh out load funny, well someone should have told last nights audience at the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre because the laughter was at time’s drowning out dialog, thankfully we had subtitles for most of the movie! It brings to mind the similar humour found in the Icelandic movie Bjarnfredarson (2009) and the gory black humour of the Jo Nesbo penned Jackpot (2011) both of which, and along with this latest film, I found extremely entertaining.

An elephant being feed by the 100 year old man!

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