Film a hit, even without subtitles

REVIEW — Kamloops Film Society showings usually attract a good crowd but rarely are they sold out. Thursday night’s screening of the 2013 Swedish film The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared filled every single seat in the Paramount Theatre.

Two hours later, most of the audience was still there.

The only reason a couple of dozen people bailed early was the subtitles — there weren’t any. Due to a technical glitch, the film aired in Swedish without subtitles.

Fortunately, the main character’s occasional narration was in English. That, and the fact it’s a hilarious film, kept the crowd — almost all of it, at least — in their seats.

Based on a best-selling book, The 100 Year Old Man spins a Forrest Gump-like tale of a centenarian named Allan Karlsson, played by Robert Gustafsson.

Karlsson makes good an escape from a retirement home on his 100th birthday, makes his way to a bus station and ends up with a suitcase full of drug money belonging to a Russian gang.

That launches a whole series of unlikely escapades, interspersed with flashbacks of even more unlikely snippets of Allan Karlsson’s life, in which he meets the likes of Generalissimo Franco, Joseph Stalin and Albert Einstein’s alleged twin brother Herbert, who has the brain of a character from Dumb and Dumber.

The film involves a lot of dynamite (since that is Karlsson’s area of expertise) and exploding people, plenty of adventure, and an elephant.

This movie is so good there will, no doubt, be a U.S. version of it soon. In the meantime, a lot of people who were in Thursday night’s audience will be rushing to the video stores or searching online for the version with English subtitles.

— Mel Rothenburger