6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
In order to prove his fatherhood potential to his pregnant girlfriend, Frank 'kidnaps' her 13-year-old nephew and tags along on his best friend Casper's debauched weekend canoe trip.
Starring: Frank Hvam, Casper Christensen, Marcuz Jess Petersen, Mia Lyhne, Iben HjejleForeign | 100% |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Danish: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Danish: Dolby Digital 5.1
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Digital copy (as download)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Klown is the feature film version of a popular Danish half-hour comedy that aired from 2005-2009 and was frequently compared to Larry David's HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm—except that Klown did things that might make even Larry David hesitate. The infamous Danish frankness in matters of sex allowed the series a latitude that few American comics would risk for fear of pushing the boundary of discomfort past the point where people stop laughing. As an example, the Blu-ray extras include an episode entitled "It's a Jungle Down There", co-written by Lars Von Trier, whose penchant for making viewers cringe is well-established. A key plot point involves a porn magazine focusing on women who never shave in the region of . . . you get the idea. The series starred former stand-up comic Frank Hvam as "Frank", a semi-retired stand-up comic, and his friend and writing partner Casper Christensen as Frank's friend, "Casper". Frank's live-in girlfriend, Mia, was played by actress Mia Lyhne, and Casper's life partner, Iben, was played by his then-actual life partner, actress Iben Hjejle, best known outside Denmark as the object of John Cusack's longing in High Fidelity. Wherever possible, Frank and Casper used real people and places to build their plots, but unlike Larry David, they scripted their episodes. Klown remained, however, a comedy of discomfort, and Frank and Casper were always the butt of their own jokes. "I've heard a lot of people say of the TV show that they can't watch it", Christensen told one interviewer. "They watch 15 minutes and they go, 'This is too much. I want to watch it, but I've got to take a break because this is so awkward now, the atmosphere is so weird.' So people stand in front of the TV, and it's almost like a horror movie [where] the more you get scared the more you want to come back for it." When the series ended after six seasons, the duo sat down with their director and began to develop a movie. The Danish teaser trailer promised that the film would make up for all the terrible things that Frank and Casper had done on television. They would provide a beautiful and epic family movie: life-affirming, romantic, moving. Unfortunately, the teaser went on to admit, Frank and Casper failed to deliver. Then it cut to a scene of them trying to have a threesome. Klown was back.
The Danish teaser trailer riffed on Klown's transition from TV to movie screen by opening with clips from the television show in 1.33:1, then widening the image to the 1.85:1 format of the film. Notwithstanding the wider canvas and bigger production values, the essential aesthetic remained the same. The film was shot like reality TV, with mostly handheld cameras and in what appears to be HD video. (Technical specifications were not available.) If I've followed the Danish credits correctly, the final edit was passed through a digital intermediate to color-correct and harmonize footage from multiple locations in Copenhagen, the great outdoors and the town of Skanderborg, where the music festival occurs and near which Castello Alleycat is located. Image's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is clean, clear and detailed, with its sharpness only occasionally compromised by the intense brightness of the daytime Danish light that streams in the windows of, e.g., Casper's and Iben's apartment. This appears to be a deliberate effect that reinforces the documentary feel of the production. Colors are varied, natural and well-saturated, and blacks are deep and solid, which is essential in all the scenes containing dark suits and tuxedos (including the wedding at the beginning and the Castello Alleycat sequence in the latter half). Shadow detail is quite good, although in the loathsome scene involving a threesome, the viewer may wish otherwise. During the many nighttime scenes at the music festival, it helps to be able to make out all the detailed activities happening in the frame, many of them for real, since the production shot during an actual music festival. There was no video noise, no compression errors and no signs of inappropriate "filtering" or sharpening. It should also be noted that the Engish subtitles are "burnt in" and cannot be switched off.
Like the TV show, Klown the movie relies primarily on its dialogue, but that doesn't mean its makers wasted the opportunity of a feature film soundtrack. The DTS-HD MA 5.1 is full of ambient noise that subtly (and not so subtly) opens out the scenes to help signal that this version of Klown is bigger, bolder and more shameless than anything to date. Starting with the sounds of the wedding reception crowd and the city noise of Copenhagen as Casper and Frank attend the book club meeting, we move to the various sounds of nature on the canoe trip (frequently a surprise to urbanites such as these) and then to the throbbing bass presence of the music festival. I can't vouch for the Danish dialogue, but the occasional word of English is clear enough. Klown's distinctive theme and incidental music by Kristian Eidnes Andersen will probably stick in your head—it's been compared to Curb Your Enthusiasm, but reminded me more of The Odd Couple—and the soundtrack uses some interesting standards, including "Alley Cat" (you've heard it, even if you don't know it) and a Danish version of the Roger Miller classic, "Chug-A-Lug", which plays over the credits. I don't know whether it was the film or the singer, but it sounded positively obscene in Danish.
As cringeworthy and painful as Klown's humor becomes, there is something cathartic and even reassuring in the way that Frank and Casper make themselves the object of their own mockery. Others behave badly, but they are always the worst. In one of Lars Von Trier's early films, The Idiots (1998), a group of student rebels challenged what they saw as a complacent society by disrupting ordinary lives with the "idiot" behavior of simulating mental retardation. The notion was provocative, but it retained the intellectually detached, supercilious streak that often gives Von Trier's work a queasy aftertaste. Frank and Casper don't have to exploit the mentally challenged to disrupt ordinary lives. They manage it by being regular guys, with just a bit of exaggeration. They remind us that idiots are often ordinary people who happen to make really bad decisions. Highly recommended for those who can handle it.
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