The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared (2013)

Directed by: Felix Herngren
Country: Sweden

Movie Review: The Swedish comedy “The 100-Year-Old Man…” is a feel-good movie adapted from Jonas Jonasson’s best-selling novel. The third feature film directed by the actor Felix Herngren, wins points with the jokes and dark humor but also loses some with the absurd number of coincidences of a scatterbrained plot. We follow Allan Karlsson in the day he turns 100 and decided to run away from the nursing home where he lives, involving himself in a dangerous adventure with an international gang, in the company of his recent friends. Simultaneously, we dive into Allan’s rich past to know he was discouraged as a child to think about the problems of the world. Orphan since an early age, he lived all his life as a bon-vivant, drinking, eating, and exploding whatever he could – a passion that took him worldwide, allowing him to have amiable relations with several top personalities such as Franco during the Spanish civil war, Truman during the Manhattan project, the French government for which he worked as a spy, and even Stalin who gave him a hard time in a Siberian gulag. Very bold and athletic for his age, the forgetful Allan evinces a political ingenuity, insensibility regarding the others, and an unawareness of danger that is really funny. This adventurous and eventful comedy knew exactly where it wanted to go, but I believe that with a little more cleverness in the screenwriting, and suppressing some strained aspects, it would have become less messy and more distinctive. Even with all its faults, it still provides a few good laughs, entertaining us with its inconceivable life story.