August Fools

Honestly, I recorded this film accidentally, but I still watched it because I saw an opportunity to get acquainted with the representative of Czech cinema, which I have long been skeptical of and prefer to avoid. August Fools confirmed all the stereotypes that I have formed about Czech productions based on my experiences. A low-budget, flat script that is only suitable for a small unambitious TV film. A poster story about how, thanks to love, a communist boy from a prominent family saw through and said goodbye to his career in totalitarian Czechoslovakia. Practically everything is shallow, unfinished, and provincial. The only things that caught my attention in the whole film were the duo of young Finnish actresses, led by the blonde Laura Birn, a scene where Jan Budař successfully parodies the passionate ideological speech of a Soviet youth, and the motif of a later assassin of American President Kennedy as a participant of the festival and a suitor of one of the film's heroines. I'm not saying that the whole thing couldn't have worked, but much more effort would have had to be put into the script, dialogue, and the funny punchlines of the comically tuned scenes. Overall impression: 35%. (05/22/2016)