Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

jeremy3 This is a serious fun political and social satire. I only wish I were Icelandic, because I would have been rolling on the floor. On a reality based level, this movie is about a dysfunctional family. The patriarch of the family is an "old school" Icelander trying to run a fishery (while writing his memoirs). He is stoic and practical to a "t". He alienates the younger generation by being totally about the fishery and how it is supposed to be for the good of the community - a small town in Iceland. The son has spent years of schooling in France and has returned home for the holidays (and because he is broke). As one elderly woman in the family quips 'All that education to the younger generation, and what good does it do?'.The women in the movie are supposed to be the submissive females of the Icelandic society, but they are anything but. The women in the family are aggressive, greedy, and downright crazy. The only one with any sense is the Mother and the Grandmother. The Grandmother is the wise matriarch, who knows everything about everything and lives life like an elderly George Burns (whiskey, cigarettes, etc.).There are also funny minor characters. The youngest son is the teenager. He is totally the opposite of what you would expect in Iceland. He is the white hip hopper/rapper, who only wants American cheeseburgers, fries, and to play video games. The modern Icelander has outsiders - Asians, blacks, etc. They are tolerated, but the Icelanders still stick around with their own. There is also the town policeman, who is so disrespected that his only authority left is to arrest the local ram sheep.The movie comes to a fore when the children are all arguing over who will inherit the fishery. They even plot to get their father committed. In the end the factory burns down, and everyone's dreams and schemes come to a crash. I think that a deeper level this movie is a brilliant satire of Iceland in the early 21st Century. You may not know Icelandic, but the English subtitles are enough to understand and laugh about this brilliant satirical comedy.

sergepesic Iceland always seemed to me to be the place of exotic mystery. The lonely island in the middle of Atlantic ocean. This movie was little more realistic than my assumptions. The story is old and seen many times before - father and children on two completely opposite sides. The battle between tradition and progress , between lifelong dreams and reality. Mr.Kormakur sets his movie on the harsh and beautiful landscape making the nature an active participant. All in all it is a well done film, with strong acting, but with one significant shortcoming. All the characters are so despicable that is hard to take any of it seriously. And than maybe that was the intention.

tarchon Reasonably well acted and written, and it had what I went to it for, namely Iceland, but otherwise it was the same old dysfunctional family melodrama I've seen 500 times before. It was occasionally interesting to note parallels to the old sagas - Icelandic writers seem to be constitutionally incapable of not referring to them, but I guess if you have a living 1000 year old literary tradition, you might as well use it. If it was set in New York, I wouldn't have wasted my time on it though. If you've seen a lot of movies, you'll probably be thinking things like "not the freaking dinner-table meltdown scene again" as you watch it go through all the standard dysfunctional-family plot devices.

terrymcginnis21 When I saw this film for the first and last time, I found it to be one of the worst films that I've seen from Scandinavia. Of course I am not saying that this is THE WORST movie to be exported from our Nordic cousins, but because I found it to be so pretentious. Every single one of the cast members were trying to pronounce Icelandic as clearly as they could and they felt that every single facial expression had to be expressed to the fullest. Hence, leaving the performance to be flat and flamboyant.Not to mention that director Baltasar Kormákur is a total egotist and apparently he was more conscious of letting everyone know that he directed this instead of actually directing this film (his credit appears 3 times as the director).However this film does project a dark image over rural-Iceland and it examines the Icelandic fishing industry as the same source of corruption as the family as both suffered and witnessed. This MELODRAMA tries to fit into the footsteps of the Danish film "Festen" but fails because you feel like you are watching a knock off of the Danish masterpiece. Kormákur generalizes the Icelandic family and portrays it as grimm trolls lurking from the mountains in the dark.May I suggest to Icelandic filmmakers and actors to act like you are not acting and that directors should at least make an effort to direct instead of telling everyone that he is directing it.The only one who deserves any praise in this movie is Film editor Valdís Óskarsdóttir, who coincidently edited Festem and must of felt just like home during the making of this excuse of a movie.