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Thanks for the memories!

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

101 Reykjavík tells the hilarious "coming of age story" of a thirty year old man dealing with real adult issues for the first time in his life. Baltasar Kormákur's 2000 film follows Hlyner, an unemployed thirty year old who has not grown out of his teenage years. He still lives with his mother, Berglind, in a small apartment in the center of 101 Reykjavík (101 refers to Reykjavík's area code) and spends his days at home relaxing and his nights at the pub partying. He has no passion for anything and avoids working at all costs. His lack of motivation even extends into his personal relationships as he only bonds with people he can party with. Relationships that take work, such as those with family members and with significant others, are too hard for Hlyner, and he does not even try to pursue them. His maturity level is also very low for a grown man. Indeed, his deepest thought in the beginning of the film is to wonder why porn is not shown on TV in the morning. Hlyner does not really live his life; he simply exists while the government and his mother care for him.Hlyner's "perfect" life cannot last forever, though, as one of his mother's close friends, Lola, comes to visit over Christmas. The two surprise themselves by having sex on New Year's Eve while Berglind is away. They act as if nothing happened when Berglind returns home, but the incident is hard to ignore as she and Lola announce their love for each other and their plans to live together. The relationship between Lola and Hlyner becomes more awkward when Lola announces that she is pregnant (presumably with Hlyner's child) and that her and Berglind plan to raise the baby together. While all of this is going on, Hlyner must deal with another girl that claims that he impregnated her. He has slept with her several times but has always rejected her attempts at a real relationship. He must now deal with the prospect of being a father and the responsibilities that go with it. The film centers on how Hlyner deals with these problems and his inability to address them maturely. In the end, he is faced with two options: grow up and take responsibility or give up and remove himself from the lives of everyone he knows.The absolute triumph of this film is its humor. The movie is funny from beginning to end without resorting to slapstick comedy or easy laughs. The humor does not arise from the acting, but from the situations themselves. The way the actors played their characters straight, without making it seem like the characters are winking at the camera telling us "this is funny," allowed the script to take over and create humor. The part of Hlyner was played particularly well. His immaturity and inability to deal with the crazy situations in the film is incredibly funny and drives most of the humor throughout the movie.Another way this film succeeds is how it embeds real social issues into a lighthearted black comedy. Firstly, Hlyner must cope with his mother's coming out as a lesbian. While he initially acts in a politically correct manor, Hlyner does not really know what to think of the situation. He cannot deal with it emotionally and has further problems when he learns that Lola is carrying his son. This confuses him as he does not know how the child will be raised or how his family will be organized. Will he be the boy's brother or father? Can the boy be raised by all three of the apartment's residents? Do Lola and Berglind have the right to decide the boy's future when Hlyner is his biological father? Another issue brought up by the film is the abuse of the welfare state. Hlyner is completely living off of unemployment benefits. He does not even try to find work and takes it for granted that the state will take care of him for his entire life. Lola challenges him on this and encourages him to find a job and do something with his life. Issues like these give the film intelligence and relevance. However, they do not overshadow the film or take away from its comedic values.One last success of the film is Kormákur's use of several non-vocal covers of the song "Lola." Originally about a transvestite, the 1970 song by The Kinks is perfectly used to enhance scenes with Lola and Hlyner. But the real success of the score does not come from the appropriateness of the song; the score succeeds because of how slightly different versions of "Lola" can create completely different emotions in the viewers. It is amazing how one song can follow Hlyner's emotions from his initial joy of having Lola to party with, to his fear after he and Lola sleep together, to his contempt for her as she carries his son. This one song creates a perfect atmosphere for the film as an immature Hlyner deals with the emotional problems that Lola's presence causes.101 Reykjavík does have a few problems. The film is very short (approximately 90 minutes) and would benefit from an influx of more story. The plot seems thin in some places and could be expanded upon. Also, Hlyner's mother had an abnormally small part in the movie for being quite a major person in Hlyner's life. Seeing more of her could have added to the relationships in the film. These complaints, however, are small when compared to the ways that the film works. 101 Reykjavík centers around some serious topics, but these issues are woven into a charming comedy that is incredibly enjoyable to watch.9/10

I've heard Iceland called "The Tahiti of the North Atlantic" with reference to a history of sexually loose behavior that goes well back to an era predating the "sexual revolution" in the United States, and I believe Halldor Laxness, Iceland's Nobel Prize-winning author, has a book or two along similar lines, featuring some sexually outrageous situation which is treated rather matter-of-factly, even light-heartedly, by the participants and all around them.The gentle fun in this film is of a piece with its very charming and amusing opening titles: We see, looking up at him, the hero, intent on performing rhythmic intercourse, with his glasses on; the girl whose charms he is enjoying reaches up to remove his glasses, and view her Romeo's eyes unobstructed; and we then see both the lady--and the titles--fading in and out of a serious blur as the hero continues his push-ups without his necessary spectacles.The comedy is about this young man of 30, who is a bit of a ne'er-do-well and good-for-nothing, who lazily collects welfare, lives with his working mother (his drunken bum of a father stumbles into him on the street from time to time), and how very strange developments in his mother's sex life lead to him finally becoming a man, earning a living, and being a "fine upstanding citizen" even as he takes on a semi-incestuous role in his mother's life, a role which would shock and horrify most Western viewers if the story were told a bit differently.It's a pretty, colorful film, very nicely acted, and captures very well the peculiar, quiet atmosphere of Iceland's capital. The film draws me into intimacy with its characters at once, and won me over immediately with its very low-key, simple, and very subtle humor.Icelanders number less than 300,000, and so are required to demonstrate competence in at least four major world languages in order to graduate from high school. Consequently, nearly all Icelanders under a certain age speak English very fluently. Since one of the major characters is a Spanish immigrant, characters all switch to English when they need to speak to her, and so many scenes are entirely in English that I would call the film bilingual.It's a very simple comedy, but although the sexual behavior of its main characters is most certainly racy, and the language very frank, I didn't find the film the least bit vulgar or crude, and, instead, found its humor pleasant, subtle, and engaging.My impression of Icelanders, when I visited there many years ago, was that they could be almost painfully shy people--and in a way, this is a SHY comedy about a very BRAZEN situation.I think it's WELL worth seeing and enjoying, and I would happily sit through it to enjoy it again.

I nearly didn't write this review. I mean it's just film isn't it? Writing something involves effort, creativity, thought. I could just get out, get drunk, fall down, sleep around. Wake up and repeat. Would the world be any different if I did. Bleurgh,.The glory of this film is in the world it shows. Reykjavik life for the 20-something. Permanently avoiding, well, something. Not really sure what, but it needs to be ignored. And as this is Reykjavik, it's cold. This world takes place indoors, in small, densely populated space, in warm clothes. Human contact seems to be more for survival and avoiding freezing to death rather than for intimacy. Alcohol blurs the real world and takes off its sharp edges. The nights are long in the cold. No one can see you. You're alone. Insulated from reality. Insular. That's life in Iceland. It's going to be hard to escape. Even Glasgow seems like an exciting, tropical paradise with exotic goods and thrilling times to be had.Going away from that into the realm of plot and character, I get lost. I don't know these people. Are they real? The lead character has so much stuff happening to him and around him. He's so wrapped up inside himself and can't engage with it, let alone articulate his feelings. He hates those around him and yet wants people. He's still a teenager despite being in his mid-20s. It's unfortunate that the actor plays him as mischievous, always with a gleam in the eye. To me that just didn't fit. Is it possible to be playful whilst feeling misery, anger and angst? Maybe the characters feelings were buried so far within his layers of clothing that I couldn't see what was going on. What it comes down to is that I didn't like him, I don't know him and yet his day to day life doesn't seem that unusual. A misshapen character. I'm don't think Reykjavik is that alien.The plot is bordering on farce. Nothing wrong with that, only the comedy often falls flat, and can seem inappropriate. I love black humour, only this wasn't a dark belly laugh, it was more of a greyed-out smirk. It's also incidental to the character development. He's trying to get out, he tries all sorts of things, though in the end, his only way out being to grow up, but only after he's tried to kill himself. Half-heartedly, of course.If you're not in the market for dodgy pig and dog videos, watch this for what your life could be like once you've exhausted all the opportunities your environment offers you. It's not pretty.

Iceland isn't exactly known for it's thriving cinema industry and while I hardly consider myself an expert on the films of obscure European countries; I'm not sure that Iceland have had even one major success in film-making. They do, however, have this film; 101 Reykjavik, and it's actually quite good. The first thing you will notice about the film is it's downtrodden, gritty European style; which has already been implemented in a number of smaller European country's films, most notably those of Sweden's Lukas Moodysson, to great effect. As the film predominantly aims for realism, the gritty style bodes well as the story isn't exactly a happy one. It's more weird than anything else, and it follows an under-achieving waste of space called Hlynur. Hlynur is thirty years of age and still lives with his mother, and her friend Lola, who moved in with the two. After a drunken new years eve fling; Lola finds herself pregnant with Hlynur's child, and things get worse still for our protagonist when it turns out that Lola is something more to his mother than just a 'friend'...The character 'Lola' seems to have been christened that way so that the filmmakers could implement a techo-ish rendition of the hit Kinks song 'Lola' into the plot…ah, whatever. The film delights in it's obscure plot line, and most of the humour derives from that. The movie is actually very funny, and many sequences and dialogue exchanges in the film had me in stitches. The human relationship angle of the plot is the main focus of the movie, and the way that the film analyses what happens to it's characters as they are forced into this unusual situation is actually very good. The realistic acting gives the film more credibility for it's plot, and the gritty style gives it almost documentary feel, which puts the audience in the position of the voyeur; which in turn makes the film feel more like a cross section into Icelandic life. Of course, I'm sure that not every house in Iceland is like the one put forward in this movie... Anyway, the film constantly intrigues with it's plot and characters, and although the ending feels somewhat out of place; the rest of the film is good and although this isn't a masterpiece or a must see; it's not bad, and definitely worth watching.