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Sadly Over-hyped

Good movie but grossly overrated

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

... you can always count on tears, blood, placenta and spilt beer.Having said this, this film uses all of them to good effect. This brutal confrontation with the Flanders of Pieter Brueghel and Jacques Brel, is not without its pathetic and touching moments. It reminded me a lot of Quebec's "C.R.A.Z.Y" in its enthusiasms for its subject but with, of course, much more squalor.The actors are all convincing and attractive in their own way and the direction is transparent and unobtrusive. The viewer should be warned that the opus is generously peppered with scenes of fornication, sometimes public, pissing, sometimes public, defecation, sometimes public, vomiting, sometimes public, public male nudity and transvestism, not to mention lots and lots of binge drinking.I liked the anecdote in the "making of" documentary telling how one of the father's fake moustaches was fashioned from the male actors' and crew's pubic hair. It seemed fitting somehow.

I don't know what to think of this movie. It was one of the best movies I have ever seen, but also one of the most gross.Many scenes are just gross (eg: when the neglected house cat eats the puke of father, when father is pissing in his pants while he is sitting on a chair during a beer drinking game, when some of the brothers shoot a pigeon when it shits on the bedsheets, ...) But it is also a sympathizing movie. Almost everything is filmed in the eyes of a 13 year boy who lives together with his beer drinking asocial, ill-mannered family. It are actually his father, some uncles and his grandmother. The grandmother is very tiny, has nothing to say and is not in position to change house rules nor the way of life. The boy is raised by those men and unaware of his marginal life. He just follows his uncles in their tracks (and begins to drink, smoke, ... and joins all those nasty events with his uncles).The beauty of the movie is: you just get pity with the boy.

A struggling author, Gunther, is seen as the story begins. Like most writers, he is trying to put into a book his experiences. Gunther's childhood was a traumatic experience. Growing up in a small Belgian town, he was surrounded by male figures during his formative years. His mother was absent and had no input in his upbringing. So Gunther has to rely on his loutish father and uncles for role models, that in a way, marked his life forever. The only female during those formative years were his grandmother, Meetje, who had no vote in whatever was important for the boy, or his future.Gunther was not a model student. Part of the problem was his inner conflict in which his family interfered in the way others saw him. Gunther is rejected by the only boy, Franky, that ever showed a semblance of being a true friend. Franky's father, decided his son didn't need a bad influence in his life, so the two became distant, as the worlds they both came from.Being at the center of a hard drinking family also was a factor in Gunther's development. He saw his own father and uncles go to binges of drinking that rendered them useless. As Gunther gets older his relationship with a young woman is threatened when she becomes pregnant and he doesn't want her to have the baby. Gunther's, as a writer, experiences the rejection from publishers until a Dutch editor sees the merit of his life experiences in the novels he goes to write. The arrival of the baby soften Gunther's soul and then becomes the man he always wanted to be.We were pleasantly surprised by what director Felix Van Groeningen was able to achieve with this film. He contributed to the screenplay in collaboration with Christophe Dirickx and Dimitri Verhulst. The Belgian cinema offers a different mixture of original ideas, that in the hands of the creator of this film, gives audiences a peek into a different way to present stories that capture the viewer's imagination.Never saw Kenneth Vanbaeden, the young actor who plays Gunther as a young man. He reminds us of a young Ricky Schroeder when he was a child star in the American cinema. Mr. Vanbaeden is a natural; he gives an effortless performance as the child that grows without guidance and who owes everything he became to his grandmother's wishes to separate him from an alcoholic father and uncles that were leading him to a life of binging and perpetual drunkenness. Valentin Dhaenens is fine as the older Gunther. Koen De Graeve, an actor we admired in "Loft" plays Celle, the father that lives in a constant fog, neglecting his son. Gilda De Bal is effective as Meetje. The supporting cast is excellent.Ruben Impens photographed the small Belgian town in all its drabness. The incidental music is by Jef Neve. We look forward to the next project of director Felix Van Groeningen, a talented voice from that part of the world with a lot to say.

I saw this movie yesterday. I was drawn to it because it won the golden Amphora at the "Festival de Quend du film grolandais", an independent movie festival. Seeing the film poster with naked hairy guys cycling, I knew that I would have some fun but how far will they go? In fact, the movie alternates quite hilarious scenes with drunk people with more dramatic sequences. With this consideration, the movie is finally closer to English dramedies that are used to show working class characters and, finally, whatever strange they are, you feel some sympathy for those guys. It's quite comforting to see people who don't care about the others (or perhaps even about anything) but you also see that there are consequences. For sure, this movie is not about preventing the audience from drinking or about giving any lesson. Following the story of Gunther, you just follow the day to day life of a hillbilly family with its ups and downs (a little more ups in the movie). Like they say in "Les cahiers du cinema", Felix van Groeningen makes you love and care for these model people in the same manner as John Cassavetes was able to do. In a nutshell, go and see it (except if you are a feminist of course).