kellyrantan

My husband is Polish and I've been to Poland many times. We saw the premise, and that it starred Stephen Fry, and so we decided to watch the film, as an opportunity to laugh at Stephen Fry. My husband is very particular when judging foreigners pretending to be Polish. When he saw Sophie's Choice he enquired who was that foreigner trying to pretend to be a Lithuanian? (Meryl Streep), but he was impressed with Fry's spoken Polish 'only a wift of a foreign accent' he says. He was less impressed with Fry's Polish accent when speaking English, but beggars can't be choosers. Personally I think it would have been better to cast a Polish actor in the lead role and I'm not sure if Lena was best cast in her role either. But I find that it's the kind of film that is made the more fascinating and memorable by its flawed and surprising casting. The cinematography is intelligent and carefully done without ever being pretentious or patronising and the script is unnerving; a little messy and flitting from genre to genre - just like real life (the Polish supporting cast are also great.) I found this film to be one of those golden nuggets that hangs around me afterwards. I find myself thinking about this film a lot. There is plenty of nuance in this film; a lot of depth and realism and details that are easily missed if you watch this film in the wrong mood or have too narrow an expectation of what a film of this subject matter ought to be. Watch the film with an open mind and laser focus, and you will get the most out of it.

I watched this film accidentally. My 2 year old son saw a picture of it on Disney + and thought it was a fox. He likes foxes so we ended up watching the film. We both loved it. He was transfixed by the animation. For me I love the quirkiness of it and found it refreshing that there were so many main female characters. It was nostalgic too, as the friendship group reminded me a lot of my friendship group when I was at school and I've never seen those kind of teen girls portrayed in film before.

My only criticism is that the portrayal of overly strict parental figures is becoming a bit of a cliche with Disney films lately (Brave, Encanto, Coco etc.. and now Seeing Red). It might be interesting if they portrayed it the other way round as in some overly laid back parents who learn the value of providing more boundaries and discipline.

This series feels rushed. The accents of many of the characters are inaccurate (Polish man barely sounds Eastern European. Bristolian characters sound like they come from all over the place). There are obvious loop holes in the plot which force the audience to accept wildly unrealistic events. If you watch it as a black comedy with some doses of cartoon-ish silly plot lines and a large dollop of cheesiness/cliched characters then it's quite an enjoyable ride.

The jokes are sometimes funny and the music and editing are great. The community officer is a stand-out character. The teenage characters are poorly written and cringe-worthy.

Over-all it's worth a watch, but not sure I'll bother with the second series.