The Celebration, 1998

I got snookered by its usually interesting (for me) pedigree on this one, when in fact it is just proof that Europeans can make facile "hyperrealist" irritating movies about loud and obnoxious families. Sort of bad extended-family "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (a great movie, by the way) with a bunch of screwed up adult children gathering for an event to supposedly honor their wealthy father at his giant house----formerly, symbolically, a hotel. Why they would get together to have essentially their version of a noisy, beery barbeque but with "high class" wine and linen napkins instead----when they are all twisted, unpleasant, often boorish, and with less warmth and class than the denizens of many trailer parks? Even if that were the intended class-conscious critique, my reaction is still: Bleah----get me out of here. 9.09 _______ [Cineastes may want to see this as an early example of Dogme 95----the somewhat tongue-in-cheekily serious young Neo-neo-realist filmmakers coming out of Denmark for a while with a technically purist, non-glamour approach (e.g. don't use heavy artificial lighting or syrupy soundtracks) which in turn was reflected in the stories---with this one by a first-time director Thomas Vinterberg, but this example really is nothing very deep in the end. Others are varyingly better. Try anything by fellow 'Dog' director von Triers except "Breaking the Waves," although that long, long, long drama does offer compelling performances by Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgård]

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