Ok, let’s get this unpleasantness out of the way first because this is a wonderful movie and I hate to spoil it. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann) is a terrible title. It’s a terrible title in Swedish; it’s a terrible title translated to English. You can’t sell it, fully remember it or put it on a marquee. Heck, I bet it screws with this review. Tell me my margins aren’t off. Go ahead – it screwed it up, right? The title extension to respect the original probably didn’t help.
100-Year-Old Man is my favorite surprise of 2015. Simpleton Allan Karlsson (Robert Gustafsson, who was not even 50 at time of filming, btw), like the title says, is an old man who isn’t wild about being in a home and hops out the window while the staff prepares his 100 candle birthday cake. The film then flashes to how he became a resident of the home – well, see, a fox killed his cat, so he, quite literally and spitefully, blew the fox to smithereens.
Turns out Allan has had an obsession with blowing things up since he was a small child. And, being not terribly bright nor politically motivated, he found himself a very useful tool for various armies of the mid-20th century. But I’m getting ahead of the Forrest Gump angle. Allan wanders into a bus station and buys a ticket to Byringe (where, as he’s told, there is “nothing”) as it’s all he can afford from the pocket change in his nursing home garb. Meanwhile, a thug with the runs orders the old dude to watch his suitcase while he uses the too-tiny bathroom, so Allan takes with it. Not maliciously, not slyly, just matter-of-factly – the tone to this film is a fantastic study in black comedy. Allan reacts to almost nothing, no matter how traumatic or fantastical. Is he too old to react, too stupid, or just doesn’t care? Don’t know, but when the thug turns up dead ten scenes later, the reaction is an impassive, “oh.”
The thug’s suitcase is full of money, never a bad McGuffin, and Allan and new pal Julius (Iwar Wiklander), apparently the lone resident of Byringe, now must move the loot and dispose of a body. The farce gets even better when they
encounter Benny (David Wiberg), a man who has an anxiety attack when asked the simple question, “are you a student?”
Just wait until the elephant shows up.
This horribly titled film is non-stop smiles almost beginning to end. It’s not only modern pharce, but a namedrop film as a nonplussed younger Allan gets introduced to General Franco, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Joseph Stalin and half-a-dozen other mid-20th Century notables. Now you can see the Forrest Gump comparison, yes?
OK, that said. Let me end by suggesting some alternative titles for this film, which deserves a better one, because it deserves to be seen:
[unordered_list style=”green-dot”]
- The Old Man
- Allan
- The Elephant
- Escape!
- Forrest Gumpsson
- A Trip out the Window
- Spry Geezer
- The Stroll
- Not-so-Bad Not-so-Grandpa
- Rocky XXXVIII
[/unordered_list]
Any one of these would be far superior to the original. Then again, so would any random set of ten letters and punctuation. I give you: Rewquf;oir, the Movie.
♪There goes Allen escapin’ from that home
He-hops-a-bus-a-goin’-that-away
There goes Allen into town Byringe
No idea where he’ll end this day
He got the Midol, he got the Mortin
Yeah, no pain today
Maybe rig an explosion
That’s how this boy likes to play
He don’t care nothin’ ‘bout folks in charge o’ him
He just wants somethin’ he ain’t tried
He do the walk, he do the walk outside♫
Rated R, 114 Minutes
D: Felix Herngren
W: Felix Herngren, Hans Ingemansson
Genre: Gump-lite
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: 100-year-old men
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Atomosophobics
♪ Parody inspired by “Walk of Life”
