editor, please?

Well, comedy is hard to do, isn't it?

I'll grant the very broad and very obvious fact that comedy is notoriously culture-specific, and this film obviously has some fans, so maybe either 1) the unfunny parts didn't seem so unfunny to Belgians et al., at least not enough to mar the experience of the film, or 2) the unfunny parts were actually _funny_ to Belgians, which tells you a lot about Belgians. (I'm kidding, of course. Belgians love getting ribbed. And as long as they keep making the best chocolate in the world. All is forgiven.)

FWIW, I'm an American, yes, but I'm just about positive I like a higher percentage of the Euro films I've seen (and international films in general) than American films, particularly high-financed Hollywoodish crap. I used to write published film reviews, and I was always worried about slipping into xenophilia--tending to like foreign films simply because they were foreign, cutting bad foreign films too much slack, and being too hard on American big-budget films that are actually pretty good. (I worried about that specifically because I read big-name reviewers who were like that, even reviewers that I thought were otherwise brilliant. You probably know who they are, if you care about this stuff.)

Point is, I'm not anti-Euro, anti-weird, anti-different. In fact, I'm pro-those things, even to the point of guarding against being too much that way. But there were just too many unfunny moments here. Not "many" as in "outnumbering the OK-to-very-good moments," but enough to undercut the humor. Comedy is fragile that way, if you're operating at anything above the drunken-idiot level (where you'll laugh at your idiot friend's next joke or pratfall even after he makes a child-molestation joke that's way, way over the line). I'm not sure why that is. But you know what I mean. You watch a stand-up comic, you think he's pretty good, and suddenly he does a couple of really over-the-line jokes or one really unfunny routine, maybe no more than a couple of minutes in an hour set, and it colors the whole act badly. I wonder if, to find something funny and remember it as being funny, maybe we have to feel that there's something decent and trustable about the sensibility behind the person originating it, even if it's said through a persona that is untrustable or unlikable. Anyway. Too deep for me.

It's too bad about this film, because some of it is pretty hilarious. The anchor rope that foils an ambush is a nice moment. There are others. And the basic story driving the humor is pretty good: The woman is stunned at finding out she doesn't matter even to the people who are closest to her, and the weirdness that ensues actually works very well with the state of shock that naturally follows such an epiphany. Many people will find that state familiar, where all the old moorings are gone and you're trying to pull together the pieces and salvage something worthwhile, go in a new direction, whatever. But every time the film gets some comic momentum going, some gag falls flat, and the momentum has to be started from zero--or maybe a little less than zero--again.

Bottom line, if you can make yourself ignore the unfunny gags, this might be worth a rental. Just understand what you're in for.