Funny Farm

A Wilder-esque story in which we don’t know and don’t need to know why the married couple are fleeing to the country. (We see what they came for at the end, in the caricature of an idyllic bumpkin.) Unlike in ordinary comedies about country bumpkins, the humour is not based exclusively on the confrontation between the bashful city slickers and the crooked-toothed yokels. Both are equally ridiculous and I felt little sympathy for them when they were the targets of violence. Compassion would have cut many of the coarser slapstick gags (fishing) off at the knees, which would have been a great pity, given the skill with which Hill serves up the pratfalls, jumps and punches. The smooth comedic flow is helped significantly by the higher production values, which are audible thanks to Bernstein’s music and visible thanks to Ondříček’s cinematography (those hard-to-describe scenes that are funny due to the juxtaposition of things happening in the background with nothing happing in the foreground). The rural countryside here is primarily a place to meet one’s death, i.e. a certain return to naturalness covered up by the pretence of civilisation, which, however, does not put Andy’s idiotic behaviour by the fireplace in a more favourable light; in fact, that is just an awkward screenwriting trick with the aim of advancing the story to a more serious level (the cooling of relationships symbolically comes with the arrival of autumn). The last third of the film, which plays on the emotions, fails due to the reasons mentioned above (how can we be moved by someone whom we have been laughing at up to this point?) and the pacing also grinds. However, much is set right by the climax, which bears the cynical message that money stinks less than a rotting corpse. Lovers of slapstick and well-timed jokes in general should not be put off by the film’s average rating here. (19/07/2015)