A Man Like Me
A Man Like Me
| 16 August 2002 (USA)
A Man Like Me Trailers

A postal worker falls in love with the Chinese waitress at a Chinese restaurant. They start dating and quickly fall in and out of love, the waitress returning to China. The young man looks for comfort in his father but he's too preoccupied with winning the Eurovision song contest. After listening to loser friends talk about what Sylvester Stallone would do in his situation, the postal worker decides to buy a ticket to China and follow his love to her home.

Reviews
Harockerce

What a beautiful movie!

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Blucher

One of the worst movies I've ever seen

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CrawlerChunky

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

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Lidia Draper

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

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chawke-1

... In the rarely seen Icelandic movie A Man Like Me, the audience will laugh out loud amid the breakdown and aftermath of the relationship. The 2002 film is director Robert Douglas's most commercially successful. He also met his future wife, a Chinese-born woman, on the set. But the film is refreshingly free of Orientalist clichés, perhaps because the leading woman's character was originally conceived as a Pole. Douglas tells the Global Times that filmmakers decided to cast the role with a Hong Kong actress Stephanie Che so could widen the commercial appeal of the film. Douglas said they also wanted to visit a more exotic location than Poland. In the opening scene, the main character reveals on a televised dating show that his longest ever relationship ended after just three months when he found a used prophylactic in his bed. The waitresses at his regular Chinese restaurant where he often eats tease him about being famous. Júlli agrees to help paint the house of the main love interest, Qi, and he meets her daughter. A montage of syrupy moments backed by a romantic songs shows the couple falling in love. This scene is a homage to cheesy Hong Kong romantic comedies, Douglas says. Júlli asks Qi to marry him, and in a twist, she says no, asking him if he thinks she needs a visa. Júlli is devastated, and the two stop talking. To cheer up, Júlli quits his job, gets a new haircut and clothes, and starts selling a health supplement as part of a pyramid scheme. He fails miserably. The only customer is his father, a musician with a single hit record twenty years before that won a "Silver Cassette" for selling 2,500 copies. The father dreams of representing Iceland in the annual Eurovision music contest. Qi returns to China to care for her sick mother, and Júlli follows, intending to profess his love for her. When he arrives at her village in Guangdong, he sees her with her ex-husband, and returns home in despair. The film ends with Júlli and Qi having a chance meeting. They have a pleasant formal conversation, and promise to meet again for coffee. Neither of them acknowledge the fact that she is many months pregnant. Júlli's father, meanwhile, gets rich selling the nutritional supplement to U.S. soldiers based in Iceland and has a second rise to fame, representing Iceland in the Eurovision competition.... A Man Like Me is the precise kind of film that people attend independent screenings to see – intelligent, funny, movie, and unknown to most people outside of Iceland, where it was a money-making hit....

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franza

It is in a way a beautiful film. It´s a life we all know, maybe not our life, but life of a friend or someone we know. It´s going the wrong way about everything, and as soon as he let go of the dream it started to come true. Happiness isnt easy to find, sometimes it´s better to let it find you.Þorsteinn Guðmundsson gives the best performance. He plays this loser hilarious who is oppressed by his wife and try´s to hold his head high and be proud.This is in my opinion it´s a great film which I think even people from other countries then Iceland would enjoy.

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hoskuldurkari

"A man like me" (Maður eins og ég) is probably one of the best Icelandic film ever made. R. Douglas manages to tell a brilliant story about a lonely guy seeking happiness in a simple but ironic way. The strongest points are (like in R.Douglas previous film "The Icelandic Dream") good dialogues and solid characters. I had a really good time watching this one.

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likai

I saw this film while in Iceland this summer. I've only seen one other Icelandic film which at the time did not impress me, that film was 101 Reykjavik. This film has some similarities but all in all it's a much more enjoyable experience and a nicer film. It's a contemporary Reykjavik story about icelanders and foreigners mixing it up with some funny results and honest views on Icelandic society. Stephanie Che plays a character from mainland China that's just moved to Iceland in hope of a new life, there she meets an Icelandic postal worker and falls in love. The film is mostly about the guy and his family and how the deal with there relationships with somebody from the other side of the world. The film is very well acted and it has a warm feelgood quality to it. The director seems to have given the actors some freedom as to where to go with dialogue and even scenes and that gives the film a raw and spontaneous quality and some odd humor every now and again. All in all this is a good film and I certainly hope it will get a wider audience outside of Iceland.

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