Truly Dreadful Film

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

"The Elementary School", chosen by Czech audiences as their greatest film, is proof that countries can rarely be trusted when it comes to deciding such things. One suspects it is beloved in its own country not because it is a particularly great movie, but because it depicts a country that no longer exists (Czechoslovakia) - and perhaps never existed in the first place.The main character, Eda, is a mischievous tyke whose terribly behaved class sends his teacher crazy. She is replaced by a war hero who introduces corporal punishment, and with it, respect and admiration.Eda should be carrying the movie, but never emerges as a character in his own right. Isn't the movie supposed to be seen through his eyes? The camera supersedes him.The cast of characters is the typical group of kooky eccentrics, though again, few make much of an impression.The movie needed to get down to Eda's level. Instead it hovers around him, showing everything bathed in suspicious gold, not letting us get close enough to doubt the idea that life wasn't better back then.

Shortly after the end of WWII, a new male teacher starts in a grammar school in a quiet poor suburb of a city in Central Europe. This former officer in a uniform with a REAL PISTOL and always a war story at hand catches the hearts of all boys very quickly. When you are a young boy, the world is so full of adventures! But sooner or later you will learn that life is more then just boy games and adventures ... Althoug The Elementary School might be seen as a movie for young boys, it also brings with it a very serious hidden message (contrary to Oscar winning Kolya of the same director). If you look away from the child games and small rascalities, the true central character is Eda's father. The movie consist of memories of an old man who recapitulates his childhood and his relation to a strong fatherly figure in his family. It is about lost childhood, lost innocence and the first questioning whether my father is really the best, greatest, wisest, strongest etc. man in the world. This is even more important line of the story then the Tom-Sawyer-like undertakings. And the movie is really good ...

A delightful little movie that makes you feel good inside after watching it. I saw it the first time at a movie festival in Pisek in what was then Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1991 and when I see it now it's like going back there again.Advertised as a movie for children in the newspapers, I beg to differ. Children will enjoy it but it is also suitable for a mature audience.Kind of similar to Lasse Hallström's My Life as a Dog.

Igor Hnizdo (Jan Triska) arrives as a new tough teacher to work in the elementary school in a small Czechoslovakian town just after the WWII. The movie reflects many of the dark aspects of the Czechoslovakian history. They're being told with a lot of sense for humour but in fact are not so funny because of the historical facts. Scholars are growing within the time background of the 1945 (end of the war) and 1948 (Communistic overthrown) which makes otherwise sweet and funny movie somehow dark from perspective that you know how bad future lies in front of them.