The DVD jacket says, "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu." "A black comedy with serious side effects."
"The most acclaimed comedy of the year."
I laughed two or three times. I thought it was very well acted but actually sad.
Yeah. It's not a comedy, nor a black comedy. Gave me a few laughs though but few great movies don't.
Somebody here has been drinking and I'm sad to say it ain't me - Allan Francis Doyleshare
I would not qualify this as a comedy. A few parts were amusing, but overall I think it was a drama.
shareAbout an hour into the movie I realized that this most definitely was not a comedy. All that "Acclaimed Black Comedy" stuff on the posters I put down to the distributors not knowing how to market this little oddity of a film (a marvelous film, in my opinion) so they tried their hand with black comedy. What surprises me is that so many critics describe it as a comedy too. Were they watching the same film as us?
It has some funny lines but generally I found the movie bleak and at times harrowing. It's a raw, no-frills depiction of a man's slow demise in the mostly apathetic hands of some exhausted medical staff. The funny lines are in the movie not there as light relief, but because in life we hear funny lines too. Sometimes we even make our own funny lines, although no one ever finds mine very funny...
Oh yeah. Watch the trailer on the DVD. It for sure depicts the movie as a comedy. It has a nice bouncy soundtrack and tries to twist certain sad moments from the movie into comic ones. Sheer false advertising.
Just saw the movie, then the poster and the trailer. I can't believe how they marketed this!
shareA lot of it is certainly down to the marketing and distributors BUT...
...do not forget that it is a Romanian film. The director himself says that there are certain lines that only people that speak the original language would understand. Word play and nationally recognised satire perhaps.
The front cover and trailer are both very misleading though as this film is in no way a "most acclaimed comedy of the year".
Make the difficult look easy, make the easy look beautiful.
I don't think black comedy is too far off the mark. Jet black, yes, but black comedy all the same.
(Keep in mind that true black comedy isn't necessarily supposed to make you laugh).
I watched this last night, going into it thinking it was a black comedy. About 20 minutes into it, I got the feeling it was definitely not a comdedy, and reapproached it as a drama. The movie got decidedly better after that.
All the while I thought I had missed something, or it was some shoddy subtitles. However, my Romanian girlfriend wasn't laughing through the movie, and only said I missed out some of the swear-words that weren't put in the more G-rated subtitles.
I'm glad I've found many people have the same opinion as mine.
So what could you call it? I think comedy is too strong. I was beginning to think it could be "Kafkaesque", but even then, the realism of this movie puts paid to that. The fact is, there are so many ill and elderly who suffer like this.