Non Plus Ultras

Tout comme beaucoup d’autres, j’ai du mal à classer ce film en matière de genre et à lui trouver une raison d’être ou un message. Surtout, je n’ai pas du tout compris pourquoi l’intrigue incorpore le personnage incarné par Vladimír Dlouhý. Reconnaissons-lui quand même quelques bons passages, notamment ceux qui suivent la tradition des sketches avec le duo Kaiser et Lábus. (02/02/2015)

A futile attempt by a film to achieve social drama/comedy. The intention is commendable, but the execution misses everything that would make Non Plus Ultras at least conceptually relevant. The script is terribly naïve, not out of its stylization, but in that its structure imitates "life movies" in vain. It seems to me like a typical "let's imagine how football players live" experiment. The resulting cardboard does not surprise. It completely misses the mark, feels unbelievable and utterly showy. A classic parallel reality of Czech comedy, outside of relationships, outside of psychology, outside of humor, outside of the game. It only gets points for the solid actors. (04/04/2011)

I don't sympathize with bald hooligans whose only entertainment is going to the stadium and causing as much trouble as possible. I strongly doubt the intelligence of these people. I don't know what director Jakub Sluka's intention was when he was deciding who he was making the film for. Either for the hooligans to feel good that they are so great that movies are made about them, or for the "rest of us" and wanted to showcase to us the stupidity of these people. Throughout whole movie I felt like Sluka was trying to play both sides. Unfortunately, he did so unevenly, because there is a certain sycophancy toward the Ultras. The average viewer can grasp the film and find in it what the director intended to convey. That is, what he already knows and does not need to be proven. That hooligans are morons who have nothing else to do. There is, however, a certain effort to make all the characters less black and white. The boss of the party, Jirka, is quite a likable character who has been "given the gift of thinking." Unfortunately, Sluka compensates through his character for the shortcomings and monotony of all the other characters too much. David Novotný can’t carry the film as an actor even if he tries his best. He does his best, and his charisma radiates at every step, but he is simply not enough. Jiří Lábus played a really disgusting role. He was an extremely unsympathetic character, and I tried the whole film to find at least something to like about him. Moreover, Lábus overacts in an unhealthy way, which is quite surprising coming from him. Not explaining the behavior of the innkeeper in Oldřich Kaiser's excellent performance seems like another mistake by Sluka against logic. Overall, the film would have benefited from an extra fifteen to twenty minutes. I would try to stomach it, and then maybe something could be inferred from the film. This way it feels like the editor's scissors may have worked a little too hard. Or maybe the director didn't get it right...? (05/02/2005)

The sympathetic environment of the pub was about the only thing I liked about this. I’ll take the director's word for it that this was just a set of scenes taken from life. Moreover, his contemplation that the state does not care about Czech cinema was true. He also cast a lot of good actors - Hlaváčová, Konvalinková... and even Hála. But why he didn't think through the concept of the script is a mystery to me. (29/06/2009)