Montecarlo! (2004) User Reviews

A bad movie with excellent acting

[sycul · 6/10 · 10 October 2006]

This movie is an adventure/comedy about three high school teachers leaving for Monte Carlo to play all the school's savings in the famous Casino in the hope that they will double it, thus saving their crumbling school from close-down.

The basic idea is good and this movie could have been good, as well, but unfortunately the script is poor. There are nice and funny moments in the film thanks to the three actors who play the three main characters. Koltai and Mucsi are famous and great Hungarian actors, so they didn't surprise me. Gerda Pikali, playing the female character is surprisingly good in this film, adding a little bit of flavor to the story.

In order to understand the humor of this film one has to be born Hungarian. The condition of some schools is really that bad in Hungary as depicted in the film and there's hardly any aid coming from the state or elsewhere. And yes, teachers are much underpaid in Hungary.

I understand one cannot expect miracle from a low budget movie - although I've seen very good low budget movies -, however a bit more adventure, a bit more action and few more characters would have helped the story.

Bottom line: this movie is definitely NOT a MUST see. One can enjoy it in a rainy evening, especially if s/he's a Koltai or Mucsi fan, but otherwise it's a waste of time. This is NOT one of the good Hungarian movies - and believe me there are some really good ones.

Yet another Hungarian Third Act Catastrophe

[skuhn8 · 8/10 · 22 September 2008]

As the other commenter noted there is some fine acting here for the kind of film it is. Particular credit goes to Kotai Robert for not descending to the camp buffoonery that has marked his downward trajectory of late. Looking at his recent screen and stage work it is hard to believe this guy was in a Bela Tarr film in his early career.

I watched Montecarlo last night as it was a cheap DVD purchase here and thought figured they couldn't do too much damage in only 80 minutes. The first two acts were fine. Beautiful leading lady (finally someone that looks real, has human proportions). As a former high school teacher here in Hungary I appreciated the 'message' that backed up the plot, the deplorable state of the educational system, lack of respect/appreciation for its teachers. They actually managed to get the message across without being too heavy handed. Kudos.

But, again, as with so many Hungarian films, the third act is a catastrophe. This is tradition. Ernst Lubitsch, of the famed Lubitsch Touch, would come to the national theatre in Budapest during his Hollywood Career to find plots for his films. In numerous interviews he said he'd get a great story that sadly fell apart in the Third Act, patch it up and make it soar. This unfortunate screen writer's curse follows through the work of the great sixties period, for instance the great Zoltan Fabri's Két félidö a *imdb does no allow this word of the title for some mysterious reason* aka Two Half Times in Hell where the Third Act comes off like it was written by an adolescent (though penned by The Witness' Peter Bacso) and finds relief in the current 'serious' films of today's generation like Fekete Kefe (aka Black Brush) that are so devoid of content that a lame finale can slip by without notice.

But back to Montecarlo: sure, this is quick entertainment for the masses, but even a little effort could've gone a long way.

Spoiler: what do we get: following the inevitable loss we have a pointless encounter on the beach with another tourist, perhaps supposed to elicit some notion of 'there are more important things in life/oh why can't we really communicate/oh but we can!', scene of hopeless searching through the town, a totally out of place starvation/angry natives scene, and then when the VW has come back to life the lead-in to the implausible "everythings fine--no, GREAT!" finale. Somewhere in there there was a stupid "no, it's YOUR fault" scene that plays on too long without ever reaching the obvious conclusion any moron could see: Um, I told you I couldn't pick the number, why did we have to bet everything on a random number?! None of the above contributions one iota to the resolution or development of character (and yes, we can use development even in a comedy--Valami Amerikai managed quite nicely with a larger cast even).

End of spoiler--

And all of this in a film that couldn't reach 90 minutes. Total randomness. I don't care what the budget was: why is it so hard to write a decent script before going into production?

Garbage. I give it a 3 because the first part isn't half bad. I learned some new Hungarian curse words as well, so that's always a plus. Leave it to Mucsi Zoltan to help in that area (look to his recent slew of Miklos Jancso films to learn more about that).