Scroll at the end of the review for my final thoughts
"Mirciulica" it's 2022 romanian comedy, starring Mircea Bravo (yes I'm going to use his stage name), who's also producer, writer and creator of the two iconic characthers: "Bunica" - Elena Moldoveanu and "Mirciulica" - Mircea Po.... Bravo!
This is Mircea's first film, even he admitted that this movie barely scratched the surface of what he's capable of. And this sentence will transition to arguably the most interesting subject related to this movie: the reception
I remember back in October that the movie was getting pretty high reviews. The critics thought it was fine, but the audience seemed to like this movie until you've seen some of the most negative takes on this movie. If you don't like this movie, that's fine: I got better things to do than get salty over some negative reviews. I can see where they are coming from: the movie is pretty bare bones, and Mircea still needs to improve his acting skills. But this movie was never supposted to be some reformal of cinematography, neither to be some award winning masterpiece. This movie is just a fine entertaining, mildly educational piece of filmmking, that even if it attemted to make something great, it would've been too big of a task. Honestly I feel like there's a cold mentality towards Romanian movies tha I'll like to address: 1. No, of course Romanian movies don't stand a chance against Hollywood movies, this is just hypocritical. Hollywood has a century old reputation. 2. No, Romanian actors are not as good as foreign actors. Most of them are beginners, and also some of them aren't actors to begin with. 3. Just because it isn't what you expected that doesn't mean that it's trash. 4. Raunchy adult comedies have been a thing for decades. It's OK if you don't find these movies OK. While I agree that many of these movies don't need cursing, not all moves have to be kid friendly either. Sometimes a darker, more edgy take on a general subject is what you need. Also many communist Romanian movies didn't have any profanity not because that was the writers' vision, but because of the regime.
OK, let's talk about the movie itself:
-The story itself follows the maturization of our protagonist Mirciulica. He's naïve and clueless and clumsy, but good heated and hard working. The selling point of this movie is his encounters with different characthers, each time learning something new, building up to it's climax where he cracks and takes matters in his own hands. Unfortunately his journey feels akward since there's no clear smooth progression.
-Most of the time he's naïve and clumsy until the script needs to, kinda blocking the script from showing it's true potential. Also yeah.... Mircea Bravo is not great actor. He kinda reminds me of actors like Rowan Aktinson and Benny Hill, who exclusively play in comedies. And whenever the script got serious, their childish behaivour added to the emotional core of the moment, mostly because the writers know that these characthers aren't mature, real peaople. Their characters had unique likeable features that made them different but likeable. Mirciulica is mostly a regular dude, that's also completely parallel to the real world and feels like he has a lot to learn. His expressions and acting kinda lean towards a manchild type of guy, and let's not forget the akward situations he gets through. But besides that he's a regular dude. He doesn't have any unique personality traits and the script does not push his childish demeanour to it's limits. He's tehnicallly a regular dude that's naive and acts akward. And the biggest problem is that whenever he has to break his character, it fails because his acting is still weird and artificial, it doesn't feel genuine. But to be fair, the movie is saved by the supporting cast of characthers. Each and one of them has a clear role it the story that they accomplish perfectly. The movie's moral lesson and it's political discussions were probably the best part of it. It opens the discussions of multiple social dilemmas that they've discussed tastefully in my opinion. The characthers, while comedic, still leave an impact to this world, having sharp personalities and fun chemistry with Mirciulica. Also the other actors do a better job then the lead which to be fair I don't know if this is a compliment or not. My favourites were Dan Chiorean & Adrian Cucu (which he's also a Stand-Up Comedian, that's probably why)
-The cinematography is unfortunately pretty boring and the soundtrack consists of royalty free music that something suits the movie, sometimes it doesn't.
-I give this movie a 7/10 because it tried to make something interesting, but also having the humility to only focus on it's few strengths, making for a not perfect but memorable experience, diving into social, political and moral problems but also being a fun, stress releaving feel good movie. I had a good time and I highly recommend for a group watch.
