Hodinářova svatební cesta korálovým mořem

It’s no surprise this film has been included in The Shockproof Festival program. The Czech Monty Python? Bollocks! A post-normalisation farce, with humour on the level of TV variety shows of the time. It wants to be so wild, so crazy and dada that it's just ridiculous and exhausting. And you will love Felix Slováček. PS: I felt sorry for the talented Laďka Kozderková and that chubby little pig. (2017.06.27)

"Would you like a harmonium?" About the film: It reminded me many times of Monty Python's Flying Circus with its pervasive absurdity. I was amazed watching it and I continue to be amazed. Especially because its director also made the awful Czech film Blázni, vodníci a podvodníci. So what do we have here? Karel Augusta, Petr Svojtka and Ivan Vyskočil play three... Hmmm... It's hard to say. In short, three men who will tell us a story. I mean... They will tell it and create it at the same time. In the very opening scene (in the theatre, where Milan Lasica is sitting and playing cards), he decides that it would be appropriate to start with a wedding. And so, after the credits by Jan Švankmajer (depicting love of a piece of raw meat and an old wind-up alarm clock), we watch the wedding of two seniors in Old Town Square. However, since the husband does not survive the ceremony (he has a heart attack at the moment when he is supposed to carry the bride), Augusta, Svojtka and Vyskočil enter the plot and start choosing a new suitable couple. The choice falls on the butcher (Šárka) Laďka Kozderková and the watchmaker (Ctirad) Luděk Sobota and the title Švankmajer immediately makes sense. Not so much the story. Karel Augusta and co. are constantly driving the action forward, inventing various coincidences and other situations that help Sobota and Kozderková (and their randomly selected parents) to get closer, and when they are in a tight spot, Lasica gives them advice from the help box. There are two men in suits moving and offering an antique harmonium, sometimes someone sings, now and then a popular Semafor personality appears... In short, an unbelievable sequence of variously good sketches that often lack a point, verbal humor taken to the absurd (Felix Slováček, mentioned in Ruut's commentary, is probably the best example) and bizarre scenes. Have you ever wished to see all the water drained from the Vltava River? Did you want to see a rugby match of brides fighting over a live pig instead of a ball? And what about the chase of three men chasing a runaway harmonium through the streets of Prague, to which the notorious tune from William Tell plays? Or Felix Slováček as a modern-day Pied Piper? It's all here. And there is actually much more. No, this movie doesn't make sense, don't expect it to. Watching the final super-musical climax, every viewer must have the feeling that the director, the screenwriters and the actors have lost their minds. But I can’t help that I enjoyed the irresistible chaos so much. (2011.10.05)