User Reviews

Well, to be honest Goritsas film has just as many weak points as any other greek film. But it is much better, because it is unique! A trully unique comedy, with an "every day" subject -at least for Greek people, it is cosidered to be one-: Vasilis Arvanitakis has "lented" some E.U money which sopposed to be given for the raising of a Greek museum of art, to buy a brazilian football player, that is proven to has very poor skills! So, what he could possibly do when two european-union employees come to check the progress of the Museum!!? He treats them with the greek way of hospitality... so he can abstract their attention for a while...

Goritsa's direction is simple, effective and not very stylish... which is not bad at all! When a movie has bases on the screenplay then who needs all the crapy effects-of lets say Aronofsky's direction-? The screenplay is very well written and really gives all it's best, funny dialogue, furious attack against the GREEK-way of life and...a dodgy ending? That's the problem, the ending is so obviously abstract... he can't really understand why it is there hanging like a half-eaten banana!That's the main weakness... along with some plot holes who really go un-noticed if you DON'T think about it later! The acting is good, the players are really fine although nothing special comes up, with the exeption of leading actor Mainas who is really good though, a really fine actor who wastes his time in stupid-T.V shows...

All in all the movie is good, definetely worths a try! The best parts are the footaball-match sequence and the who-understand-i sequence... If you really want to see the greeks in all their magnificent brilliance you should check out this flick!

Even though this a very simple film in its direction, its main advantage - and the reason that I loved it - is that Goritsas dares to touch on subjects that most current Greek directors avoid like a plague.

Until a few years ago most, leftist, Greek directors still wandered in (and wondered about) the period of the Greek Civil war and its aftermath, almost half a century ago. Then, came a new breed of directors producing mainly "dreamy", fairy-tale like films of the kind that would make you either escape from the real world or bring back memories of the, supposedly beautiful, past (and some of these films are actually quite nice, e.g. Peppermint). Then, came Goritsas!

Both his previous film (Balkanisateur) and this one deal with current problems of Greek society. The superficial, unethical, know-it-all but actually uneducated type of person portrayed in this film as the main character is just an example. Every single little detail in the script screams with REALITY! Goritsas is certainly not out to pet his audience.

The crooked politician, the University professor that spends most of his time jogging or traveling in Brussels to get E.U. funds, the "English teacher" that speaks English worse than her students, the fallacy about the "naive" Europeans (who still make a bunch of ironic comments right in the face of their Greek hosts who fail to understand them), the slight critique against the prevalent anti-americanism but also against the European beaurocracy, even the fact that the E.U. controllers are portrayed as nothing more than human beings are all elements whose presence amounts to a small "revolution" for Greek film-making standards. Therefore, a 9/10 from me. No wonder it did not get the reception it deserved by Greek critics! If you can flip-flop from Greek to English and vice-versa you will greatly enjoy this (or be greatly offended:) ). I'd be curious to read how non-Greeks or non-native speakers of Greek relate to this film.

Either way, you can almost watch it as a documentary!