The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

Having watched the trailer for Felix Herngren's Swedish adventure film, I thought it looked incredibly exciting. Unfortunately most of the best bits from the film have been cherry-picked for the trailer which leaves a hilarious, yet slightly underwhelming movie.

On his 100th birthday and after a very eventful life, Allan Karlsson (Robert Gustafsson) is barricaded within the walls of a drab nursing home. He decides that there's still too much to experience in the outside world, so he climbs out the window. Whilst waiting for a bus, he is asked to mind a suitcase while it's owner goes to the bathroom. When the bus arrives he takes off with the suitcase, which happens to be stuffed with fifty million dollars in cash.

Whilst he undertakes his hilarious journey, we see flashbacks to his past, where he has been present at several important milestones and met some incredibly famous people, including Vice President Truman, Robert Oppenhiemer, General Franco and Stalin, among others. Sound familiar? Yes, he's also a little bit 'special' and at one stage says "Shit happens", but don't worry, this isn't a total rip-off.

Robert Gustafsson is quite good as Allan, especially considering he was often covered in plastic and makeup, but the character is quite a bland sort of person (which is where a lot a lot of the humour comes from) so there's really not a lot for him to work with. Alan Ford plays a very convincing, if not rather typecast (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch.) gangster, and Iwar Wiklander is great as Allan's travelling companion, Julius, however the rest of the cast seem to just be playing blithering idiots, which got a little bit tiresome.

The plot is a bit of a weird mix between Forrest Gump and Ferris Bueller, but it works fairly well, with hardly ever a dull moment, after all, Allan is an explosives enthusiast (don't worry, it's not a Michael Bay feature). The film is really hilarious, which is what kept me interested, and it's mainly delivered through dialogue driven gags, thanks to the great screenplay. However, as I mentioned earlier, the best jokes, the best plot points and the best explosions are all in the trailer, so if you're thinking of seeing the film, don't watch the trailer!

The overall look of the film, a bit like the effects, is nothing special. There were some interesting colour grading choices early on, such as the bland inside of the nursing home juxtaposed to the colourful flowers outside the window, but generally this is a film that lets the story speak for itself, which I quite respect. Overall, it's certainly not going to take you on a journey like Forrest Gump did, but that doesn't matter because it's a throughly entertaining movie.