Don't Believe the Hype

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

A very funny comedy set in the 1960's, about a woman (Eva Röse as Ulla) who wants to drive in rallies, and overcomes many obstacles to do it. Marie Robertson plays Birgitta, who is a painter who really wants to go to France to take lessons, but who gets no encouragement from her farmer Father, but who is good at orienteering, so Ulla eventually persuades her to become her navigator. Ulla works initially for a somewhat sleazy vet, who is played very well by Per Graffman as a man with a sense of his own superiority and entitlement, who objects very unreasonably to Ulla borrowing his PV544 to enter her first rally, which she wins, while he is away with his Jaguar in the city. There is a very funny sequence where Birgitta is slowly trained to overcome motion sickness caused by trying to read (to navigate) while the vehicle is moving fast. Maria Lundqvist is great as Eivor, who runs a diner and sings in a band with Ulla's boyfriend, a local mechanic, his boss, and a local reporter. A contract with the Citroen team terminates after the steering on their car fails. There is a wonderfully funny piece where the team manager says "For you the important thing is to finish, to advertise Citroen, It's not so important to win, you understand?" and Ulla looks blank and says "No" - "Bon" says the Frenchman. Eivor and the local people collect to support the girls, and Birgitta, who has been sent to cooking school by her Father, sells her VW to buy a good engine. They win the qualifying rally for Monte Carlo in a beautiful pink Volvo Amazon. (I once congratulated a Finnish colleague on his classic Amazon, and he said "It's not really classic, it's just old! A couple of months later he got a V70.) This is a really feel-good movie, with great action sequences of REALLY classic cars.I notice that other reviewers are unreasonably negative, but remember that that is a typical reaction by a certain sort of Swedish person to comedy, or to anything lighthearted.

Darned comments form won't let me write in Swedish. Will do my best though...I wonder how this script found its way to the screen. I also wonder if all Swedish reviewers have gone collectively bonkers. An average of 2,75 at bioprogrammet.nu is incomprehensible.There really isn't anything wrong with the storyline. You can sort of sense a good film hidden somewhere beyond. It's the 60's, there's Ulla who likes rallying and who wants to go professional, there's prejudices to fight and there's the ultimate success. Add a few good songs, some beautiful scenery an some montages into the mix. Doesn't sound too bad, right? Wrong.Ulla wants to be a rally driver. Someone else (the whole cast, of which some get to say it twice or more) says it's not for women. This is repeated every three minutes.Ulla is harassed by a tobacco chewing redneck, whose vocabulary is restricted to "Ulla" and the very naughty Swedish word that rhymes with it, who wants prove he's a better driver than her. This is repeated every ten minutes.Ulla and her co-driver have problems. The co-driver doesn't want to co-drive at all. Then she wants to. Then she doesn't. Then she wants to. This is repeated every five minutes.To spice things up a little bit there are two Conflicts. One with a mean representative for Citroen, who at first strangely enough signs the girls up to drive for Citroen, then even more strangely sabotages their car, and then strangely turns back into a jolly chap come the final scene.The other one concerns a perfectly likable veterinarian who suddenly turns into a Bad Guy. That was most likely decided half way through the filming, perhaps when the director realized the potential of actor Per Graffman.Also, the dialogue in some scenes is cringe-worthy.But it's not a complete failure. Maria Lundqvist and Johan Hedenberg resist the amateurish direction and give excellent performances. That's when you sense what this film might have been, and right then you might feel a little bit cheated.