My Sweet Little Village (1985) User Reviews

My Sweet Little Village

[henry8-3 · 7/10 · 25 March 2021]

Czech comedy about the occupants of small village, focussed mainly on the lives of driver / odd job man Pavek and his trials and tribulations with his working mate Otik, who is rather simple. It becomes so much hassle it is decided to move Otik away to Prague.

Very gently, somewhat Tati-esque take on the many eccentric characters in the village and the trouble they get into. It is slow, gentle, often quite funny and indeed very sweet and certainly worth catching.

A quirky and gentle comedy - high marks for making me laugh a lot

[calorne · 9/10 · 22 October 2020]

At the beginning I thought this might be rather arty and hard to follow, but it develops into a pleasing story of relationships in village and working life that at times is hilarious. It came out two years after Local Hero to which there appear to me to be quite a few nods.

There are good characters across the generations. The humour is witty, with some darkness and good quality slapstick. Some of the comedy was crafted in a very unexpected way that really made me chuckle and admire the writing and execution.

I felt for the pigeons.

I wonder how that boy got a Utah shirt

[lee_eisenberg · 8/10 · 12 January 2023]

I don't know how many movies from the Eastern Bloc people in the US got to see during the '80s. Among the good ones were the Soviet Union's "Voyenno-polevoy roman" ("Wartime Romance" in English) and Hungary's "Jób lázadása" ("The Revolt of Job" in English).

And then there's Jirí Menzel's Academy Award-nominated "Vesnicko má stredisková" ("My Sweet Little Village" in English). This lighthearted Czechoslovakian comedy focuses on a couple of things. The main plot is the relationship between truck driver Pávek and his colleague Otík, who has trouble understanding things (it's not clear if he's merely simple-minded or developmentally disabled). But then there's also an unfulfilled wife's trysts with a veterinarian, and a teenage boy's obsession with a local teacher. Quite a bit's going on in this town.

The characters, while flawed, are shown to be well-meaning. One thing that I noticed was that the teenage boy had a shirt saying UNIVERSITY UTAH. I will forever wonder how someone in a small town in the Eastern Bloc got his hands on such a shirt. Other than that, some of the characters' hairdos mark this as an '80s movie. Not a masterpiece, but an enjoyable one. Screenwriter Zdenek Sverák, who also appears as the painter, is best known for the Oscar-winning "Kolya".

Probably worth mentioning that the R in the director's name has a diacritic, but IMDb no longer allows diacritics on consonants.

Subtle and affectionate

[rozklad · 10/10 · 15 February 2008]

The doctor keeps crashing his car, the lorry driver is fed up with his simpleton mate and plots to move him to Prague, the girls no longer wear bras and there's flirting, drunkenness, infidelity, and even the odd punch-up. There are hints of darker bureaucratic inadequacies (this film was made in the final years of the Communist regime), but director Jiří Menzel's loving observations of Czech village life are wryly humorous, and this is principally a gentle and affectionate paean in which nothing much happens except the ebb and flow of village life — the eternal nature of which is hinted at by the circular ending. A subtle joy from start to finish. Czech DVD has moderately reliable English subtitles.

Another fine movie by Jiri Menzel

[lor_ · 7 March 2023]

My review was written in May 1986 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

"My Sweet Little Village" finds director Jiri Menzel in the warm winning form of his "Capricious Summer" as well as other more recent of his pictures such as "Cutting It Short". This comedy about small-town life in Czechoslovakia is a modest but very entertaining opus, and elicited a rarely heard ovation at its conclusion upon screening in one of the smaller salles in the Cannes market.

Simple story emphasizes situation comedy and running gags as bumbling young Otik, thought by his friends and neighbors to be mentally retrded, is rejected by his older workmate, Mr. Pavel, on delivery jobs. Pavel is not the only one tired of Otik, as an influential type is working on getting the boy transferred to a job in Prague so his local house can be lucratively modernized and resold, complete with an "English garden".

There are all sorts of goofy local intrigues, such as the young married woman who is always conspiring to get Otik out of his house (one time he is sent off to catch a "must-see" Romanian film) so she can dally there undetected with her young boyfriend. The town doctor (Rudolf Hrusinsky) is forever crashing his car into almost everything in its path, and though he is sympathetic, he is given to talking his patients out of their symptoms rather than prescribing any treatment.

Using a lowkey, simple style that perfectly snatches the rural setting and unsophisticated characters. Menzel very warmly coaxes humor out of familiar material. Some of his running gags are priceless and no matter what happens, including inevitable physical violence (as in the cuckolded husband's reaction), there is no hint of malie here. Menzel very gently pokes fun at the provincialism of his countrymen, in a universal way, as when two guy discuss how the bra-less look has caught on in the West -and how glad they are it has spread as far as their village.

Cast is uniformly excellent as an ensemble, with stalwart Rudolf Hrusinsky particularly delicious as the doctor.

Recommended

[stephengoodwin-53999 · 8/10 · 5 May 2019]

A pleasant comedy with several laugh-out-loud moments. A cross between an Abbott and Costello comedy (with roles reversed), and the drama of Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men". Well worth watching.

A relaxing light comedy for the afternoon!

[markovd111 · 8/10 · 5 March 2020]

This movie is far from legendary Yugoslavian comedies, but it doesn't try to be like that. It's literally, as one review already said, a movie about a life in a little village. It's heart warming and relaxing to watch, albeit a little depressing in some ways. You won't die from laughter, but there are a few funny scenes sprinkled throughout the movie. I give it 8/10 and I recommend it. It's still by miles a better comedy than some recent movies from Hollywood who claim to be good comedies.

Anti-Communism / Pro-Community

[caspian1978 · 6/10 · 31 March 2005]

My sweet little village is just that. A story about the people who live and die in a small village outside of Prague. In more ways than one, this is a story about living in a country where the form of government is communism. By the end of the movie, communism fails to effect the outcome of many of the lives in the village. Although this is a comedy at times, the movie falls into many dramatic pits where you wonder what is going to happen next. The brotherhood between many characters shows the village as more of a family than just a small town of people. There is more than jut one story in this movie. The main story is the village, but the plot is about the handful of lives that inhabit the village and how they effect one another. A pure delight.

I knew many scenes, but never saw the entire movie

[v-56289 · 10/10 · 21 February 2021]

Many of the scenes are known, quotations got integrated into the common language.. but I have never really seen the entire movie... always just parts doing something else while the movie was going on the TV...

I do not know whether I would appreciate it if not knowing so many scenes, lacking the cultural link, or the image about village life... but I personally really enjoyed the movie!

would give 10 stars except for the portrayal of some degeneracy in a positive light

[sgoonan11 · 6/10 · 18 October 2019]

As said in another review in a positive way as well, "the girls no longer wear bras and there's flirting, drunkenness, infidelity". This is nothing but degeneracy and while it is a fact that it has taken over even in small villages like the one portrayed in the film, I believe that it should not be celebrated. There were some very strong feminist undertones in the film surrounding the young female characters, whether it was celebrating women dressing immodesty, a woman cheating on her husband, and a woman mocking a young man who was pursuing her to the point that he attempted suicide while she pursued casual with another random man. Made me really sad to see those parts, otherwise it was a great movie that celebrates life in a rural small village.

autism makes into a comedy

[IMdber · 4/10 · 25 March 2021]

I watched this movie for about 30 minutes, as I understand it already touched upon everything that happens in the village. One of the main characters is an autistic person, "a village idiot". I felt pain watching this person. However "authentic" the portrayal of the village in the 80s in Czechoslovakia might be, I am not sure I can feel the humor here as so many situation show relatively pitiful existence of the village idiot. Though it is great to see that the community is making an effort at helping him adapt, it is also taking advantage of him. It is the reality, but from the perspective of me, a person living in an urban setting, where various things are done to make disabled feel more empowered, the village community seems some steps behind. As portraying this condition, which can never be helped ('he either strikes or has killed himself') -- the movie is very very sad, not a comedy at all. I still gave it 4/10, because of the atmosphere of the village that it creates, and it is very interesting from historical perspective.