Klown Movie

The Danish television series Klovn (“Clown”) ran for six seasons, from 2005 to 2009, and accumulated about sixty episodes during this run. It was an incredibly popular show in Denmark and throughout Scandanavia. The series spawned a feature film, Klown (2010), which has now made its way to the US thanks to Drafthouse Films. Klown presents an admittedly difficult scenario for a US distributor and for American audiences. Word-based comedy typically encounters difficulty traversing across languages and cultures (hell, some Americans are even turned off by the idiosyncrasies of British humor despite the (mostly) shared language); there’s a reason the arthouse is typically associated with snooty Euro-drama. Add this to the fact that Klown is a based on a long-running series with a core existing audience in the country in which was made that is virtually invisible in the US. Put these factors together and you’ve got a uniquely difficult film to promote. Despite these obstructions, which are by no means the fault of the film itself, Klown is well versed in the language of comedy. The film’s comedic set-pieces are executed with an undeniably honed sense of expert timing, and the emotional arc of the film is thankfully crafted without any regard for the sentimental aspects of the human condition, avoiding the rut that so many domestic comedies reduce themselves to in their final acts.


Danny McBride’s particular brand of humor seems to be one of those “love it or hate it” forms of entertainment. Some people watch what he does on Eastbound and Down and laugh hysterically, others just shake their head at it with a look of disapproval on their faces. So when Deadline Dragør breaks the news that he’s going to be starring in a new film that has the tagline, “two men and a 13-year old boy embark on an R-rated vacation,” you can probably guess how you’re going to react to it already. Those of you who will be disgusted should probably just move on to the next article, but for those of you who feel like such a film would tickle your funny bone, read on. Klovn is a Danish TV show turned feature that follows the misadventures of two characters named Casper and Frank. In the original film version they’re all set to go on a canoeing trip that they’re calling the “tour de pussy” when the bad news hits that Frank’s girlfriend is pregnant. Fearing that Frank is a total nincompoop who can’t take care of a kid, she wants to terminate the pregnancy. This doesn’t jibe with Frank’s sensibilities, however, so they strike a deal that if he can take her 11-year-old son along on the canoeing trip and not have any mishaps, then they can keep the new baby. This, of course, is a flawed plan, because the canoeing trip is planned not to be […]

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published: 12.23.2014
published: 12.22.2014
published: 12.19.2014

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