Bienvenidos al Norte

In light of the poster, knowing that 20 million French people went to see the movie is pretty scary. I was afraid it would turn out to be something like Kameňák. I mean, packed movie theaters, but no quality. And after the (almost) opening scene with the wheelchair, I began to curse myself for ignoring my intuition and was coming to terms with realizing it was real trash. But appearances can be deceiving, and in this case it turned out not to be the crock of shat that I thought it was. It's a pleasant, traditional conversational comedy. But it's all about making fun of the north of France, its idiosyncrasies and dialect. So as good as the translation might be, a lot is lost in it. After all, it’s like a comedy about a hardcore Praguer who moved to Slovácko, as in the series Slovácko sa nesúdí, or about the rivalry between Prague and Brno, with the slang and dialects that go with it, so, despite all our efforts, it would be very difficult to present this to an “outsider"... P.S.: Perhaps for the first time in my life I am sincerely curious about the Czech dubbing, because this will require an excellent translation and playfulness with dialects. (05.03.2009)

To be honest, I expected something much worse, like a redneck comedy for a tired audience. It actually turned out to be quite a sophisticated comedy for a general audience. While watching, it reminded me of the title of the film Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola. The charm of the film lies largely in the confrontation of regional dialect with formal French, and some charming linguistic puns are probably lost in the dubbing. The rest, from my perspective, can be considered as an average comedy, where the French variations of worn-out jokes and provincial characters seemed too soft to capture my interest. If I were able to understand the original version, I would definitely give it 3 stars, but even then, I wouldn't rate it any higher. They way it is it only gets 2 stars and a 45% overall impression. (25.09.2016)