The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (2013)

Original Title

Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann

Genre

Comedy

Director

Felix Herngren

Countries

Sweden, France, Germany

Cast

Robert Gustafsson, Iwar Wiklander, David Wiberg, Mia Skaringer, Jens Hultén, Bianca Cruzeiro, Alan Ford, Sven Lönn, David Shackleton, Georg Nikoloff, Sibylle Bernardin

Storyline

On the day of his hundredth birthday, Allan Karlsson (Robert Gustafsson) escapes from the retirement home and embarks on an unexpected journey.

Opinion

After reviewing "A Man Called Ove", a guy suggested me to read Jonas Jonasson's "The Hundred-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared" and so did I. I mean, that's a hell of a title, I needed to read it. And I loved it. It had its perks, but I did have a wonderful time reading it. So I decided to watch this film, but we all know movies based on books are usually disappointing, and so this one was.

And the blame is all on the writers. Instead of bringing to the screen the bizarre, absurd life of the book's 100-year-old man, it seems like they decided to take, almost at random, some pages here and there, and they basically ended up portraying the old man just as some drunk who blows up everything. Quite literally.

Other than leaving out way too many pages - I get however the decision the leave out some parts of the old's man past since they were quite boring in the book - a lot of pointless, completely unnecessary changes were made that added absolutely nothing to the plot. If anything that took away part of the fun.

Which brings me to the next point, the humour. Herngren was at least able to deliver the same dark, dry, deadpan humour of the novel quite effectively. I have to admit that not all the supposed-to-be-funny scenes were funny, but the film was entertaining after all. It's just a terrible adaptation.

To keep us company for nearly two hours there's Robert Gustafsson who does most of the job and gives a great performance as the 100-year-old man. And truth to be told, he gets a massive assist from the makeup artists who were able to make him look believable in the slippers of an old man.