This is a movie I first watched many years on some streaming platform or other (I forget which one) and really enjoyed at that time. So, when it popped up again some years later, I thought I'd give it a second viewing. I was left wondering what it was that impressed me so much on my first viewing.
This is quite a strange little film. The end credits reveal that it was written as part of a university film project and that explains a lot. It's not a bad movie. It's just different.
Essentially, it tells the story of a young Norwegian man who comes to the USA from Norway (obviously) to serve as an au pair for a widowed mother and her two young sons who live in central Kansas on a buffalo ranch. The young man is a bit of a soccer fanatic and much of the film centers around whether he is gay or not and what exactly his intentions might be towards the two sons. The movie serves up quite an odd collection of characters and the two boys (one of whom is a young teen) are the most well balanced among them. There is the Norwegian chappy himself, who goes around nursing a soccer ball and spouting 'old Norwegian sayings, which I doubt any Norwegian has ever uttered; the widowed mother who, quite frankly, is a sour, repressed pain in the rear end and extremely unlikeable; the domineering, nasty little lady sheriff who is very suspicious of the Norwegian chap and likes to throw her weight and prejudices around; the bigotted boof-headed gym coach who has a thing for the divorced Mom and, best of all, the large Hispanic transvestite who is in the cast because, well why not? We all know that every little mid-western American town has at least one stereotypical transvestite to add flavor to civic occasions. Oh... I almost forgot to mention that the ghost of the dead husband/father also frequently appears to offer folksy advice to his grieving widow - who, we discover, may not be grieving because he is dead, but because he was actually a bi-sexual man.
The movie is obviously trying to make a point about homosexuality and homophobia, but it is done in such a simultaneously ham-fisted and convoluted manner that you'll be left puzzling over what the message actually is. Still, for an obviously low budget movie, this one has pretty good production values, one or two good actors and doesn't go long enough to become boring. It is saddled with an excruciatingly awful soundtrack though, full of forgettable twangy guitar ballads that I suspect did nothing for the artist's careers. Still, it's easy enough to tune the tedious warbling out as you follow the actions of the characters and ponder whether or not the Norwegian soccer aficionado will manage to turn the homophobic townsfolk and the grieving mother and sons into fellow soccer fans and thus arrive at a happy ending.
This is quite a strange little film. The end credits reveal that it was written as part of a university film project and that explains a lot. It's not a bad movie. It's just different.
Essentially, it tells the story of a young Norwegian man who comes to the USA from Norway (obviously) to serve as an au pair for a widowed mother and her two young sons who live in central Kansas on a buffalo ranch. The young man is a bit of a soccer fanatic and much of the film centers around whether he is gay or not and what exactly his intentions might be towards the two sons. The movie serves up quite an odd collection of characters and the two boys (one of whom is a young teen) are the most well balanced among them. There is the Norwegian chappy himself, who goes around nursing a soccer ball and spouting 'old Norwegian sayings, which I doubt any Norwegian has ever uttered; the widowed mother who, quite frankly, is a sour, repressed pain in the rear end and extremely unlikeable; the domineering, nasty little lady sheriff who is very suspicious of the Norwegian chap and likes to throw her weight and prejudices around; the bigotted boof-headed gym coach who has a thing for the divorced Mom and, best of all, the large Hispanic transvestite who is in the cast because, well why not? We all know that every little mid-western American town has at least one stereotypical transvestite to add flavor to civic occasions. Oh... I almost forgot to mention that the ghost of the dead husband/father also frequently appears to offer folksy advice to his grieving widow - who, we discover, may not be grieving because he is dead, but because he was actually a bi-sexual man.
The movie is obviously trying to make a point about homosexuality and homophobia, but it is done in such a simultaneously ham-fisted and convoluted manner that you'll be left puzzling over what the message actually is. Still, for an obviously low budget movie, this one has pretty good production values, one or two good actors and doesn't go long enough to become boring. It is saddled with an excruciatingly awful soundtrack though, full of forgettable twangy guitar ballads that I suspect did nothing for the artist's careers. Still, it's easy enough to tune the tedious warbling out as you follow the actions of the characters and ponder whether or not the Norwegian soccer aficionado will manage to turn the homophobic townsfolk and the grieving mother and sons into fellow soccer fans and thus arrive at a happy ending.