Familien Gregersen (2004) User Reviews

Expanded widescreen family melodrama

[www.philm.dk · 3/10 · 11 March 2006]

Almost four hours of compressed dysfunctional family melodrama based on the Danish author Christian Kampmann's four novels from the 70's.

Hard to swallow, told with no humour. The images are sharp and well-composed but with no personality and hardly thought as anything else but technical show-off.

For those unfamiliar to Danish movies: don't think this is the standard of a "normal" Danish movie.

Bad acting and fatal casting make this hard to watch - even as a historical tour de force of Danish everyday life in the past decades. First and foremost overlong without a cause.

Better than reviews indicated

[coolhandluke · 8/10 · 8 January 2005]

Although this movie is quite long (3½ hours), time flies when your with the Gregersen family.

The first part of the movie leads you to believe that you know which of the characters are sympathetic and which are not but as the story progresses you realize that each of the Gregersens are non-sympathetic, each in his or hers individual way. There lives end up falling apart but as a viewer, you are left with the feeling that they all had it coming, which I find is a rather unusual for a movie like this.

The movie ends on a rather dark note but has a very humorous tone to it until then and you get some laughs as you watch the family and each of its members collapse on screen.

I haven't read the books yet but this adaption has certainly encouraged me to pick up Kampman's novels and study the Gregersens closer...