Vybíjená

You know how it goes when you attend a gala premiere in the middle of the week… your thoughts stay at work, so when watching a movie like Dodgeball, which is definitely not the most engaging film ever made (and in the first thirty minutes or so, you keep telling yourself “God, what did I get myself into again?”), you pay attention to barely every second scene. Naturally, I mean the scenes with the blond bombshells, both the young and more mature one. And as time goes by and you try and fail to understand who’s who with all the adult/teenage characters (the selection of the male cast is really strange), the music and the individual warmly human scenes make you grow strangely fond of the movie, in a guiltypleasure kind of way. Your intellect tries to stop you, but eventually you’ll succumb. And it ends up being a pleasant, undemanding movie for an evening in front of the TV. It feels like a little kitten you want to pet. Dumb but very cute. (17.03.2015)

I’d had no idea I was going to enjoy Dodgeball this much. Maybe also because some users here gave the movie such bad reviews. And you know what? I actually don’t get it. What’s wrong with this movie? I’m not a big fan of Viewegh. I don’t like his books and I don’t actively seek out movies based on his books, but Dodgeball might be one of the best movies based on his books that I’ve seen so far. Suchánek, Genzer and Sokol do make for a pretty good crew and Babčáková can easily keep up with them. I do admit that the time jumps were sometimes difficult to follow, but it gradually settled down and things started making some sense. The only thing that could be criticized about this movie is that rather than a comedy it’s a melancholic drama the likes of which we’ve seen quite often recently and it usually involves somebody from the improv group Partička in the star role. Other than that, it was fun to watch. It’s clear that Petr Nikolaev is rightfully one of the Czech foremost film directors. (01.09.2015)

Dodgeball is a chaotic jumble of random fragments from different time periods, it is humorous only sporadically and much more often it falls into sentiment and melancholy. Its sound and atmosphere are quite reminiscent of Snowdrops and Aces after 25 Years, but as if the first Snowdrops and Aces never existed. It doesn’t really hold together and breaks up into isolated scenes, some of which raise the level of the film thanks to capable actors, while others seem like parodies because of how terrible they are. (12.03.2015)

Dodgeball is my favorite and in my eyes therefore the best Viewegh's book. I always thought it would be very difficult to film it and I wanted to ask the author himself if he can even imagine it at a suitable opportunity. And unexpectedly it happened. When I watched the first preview, I was very skeptical because I considered the casting of almost the entire "Group" a mistake. I was skeptical for about half of the movie, but then I stopped caring. I could imagine maybe a more suitable casting, but it's not a total disaster in the end. I would like to highlight the choice of Simona Babčáková, a better choice for the role of Hujerová doesn't exist in Czech lands. The move with the duo Krainová-Bartošová was also successful. Petr Nikolaev has never disappointed me so far and he won't after watching Dodgeball. It will probably remain unadapted for me, but I appreciate the effort and he certainly managed to capture the bittersweet atmosphere that emitted directly from the book. It's not quite four stars, but given the local traditional general criticism, I deliberately lift it up. Besides, it reminded me of the comparison with Angels and in such a comparison, Nikolaev wins by a long shot. By sports mathematics, the score of the Nikolaev-Nellis battle in the last three years would be two zero. (16.03.2015)