Welcome to Norway!

There's great potential for comedy when different cultures are put together, and a house for refugees is also a very relevant setting for a modern day comedy. The actors in this movie all deliver solid performances, and act convincingly as the characters they are portraying. I also quite like a lot (everything?) seems like it's filmed on location. There's a great potential here for both comedy, and a heartwarming story.

Somehow the movie fails to deliver on both. At times it is surprisingly cynical, and some of the characters go back and forwards between believable and caricature. I did appreciate some of the dark humour, but it would have worked better with more believable characters. The woman working for the local government feels like she taken from a Ben Stiller comedy, while some of the refugees could have been characters in a drama. Not because of the quality of anyone's acting, but because the characters themselves feels like they're made for completely different movies.

The ending plays like it's supposed to make you feel good and think that people are alright - but the message it actually conveys feels more misanthropic than it does heartwarming.