Scathing review: Czech comedy "Vacation in Czech Paradise" is a disaster of a film

The new Czech film comedy "Vacation in Czech Paradise," directed by Adam Koloman Rybanský, hit cinemas as a co-production with Czech Television, backed by the State Audiovisual Fund as well as the Hradec Králové and Liberec regions — and, according to the critic, it turned out to be a genuine flop.

The film follows the Svoboda family — Milan and Týna and their two children — as they head off for a holiday at a campsite in Czech Paradise, even though the wife had been dreaming of the seaside. The husband insists on a trip through "beautiful Czech nature," but the campsite gives them anything but a warm welcome: hostile neighbors, kids glued to their phones, and a troop of scouts.

The very first group outing ends in one character's absurd tragedy, after which the plot gets bogged down for ages in endless campsite conversations. Meanwhile, an artificial, entirely unmotivated conflict between the spouses deepens, seasoned with clichéd lines like "I need a change, I'm suffocating."

What follows, in the reviewer's assessment, are "extremely silly and awkward scenes": in the middle of the night, Milan leaves the campsite for the forest "in search of freedom" and stumbles upon a group of tramps who spend most of their time drinking rum. After getting the hero drunk, they nudge him into a downright shocking act — then calmly fall asleep.

This scene, the critic notes, sums up the entire film most precisely: the characters are, at best, uninteresting, and at worst, repulsive — including the protagonist. The movie is also stuffed with foul language yet completely devoid of humor, which sharply contradicts its billing as a "family comedy."

The direction is rated as "well below average": during the lengthy scenes of the hero wandering through the forest, the framing gives away the director's lack of professionalism. The reviewer also singles out a glaring continuity blunder — a dried-up spring that, a few hours later and without a drop of rain, is merrily gurgling with water again.

The acting, in the reviewer's opinion, matches the weakness of the script and direction: Magdaléna Borová and Tomáš Jeřábek essentially "trudge" through the film, while Saša Rašilov, playing one of the campsite regulars, performs so poorly that viewers might wish he'd been cut from the film entirely. The final verdict: 0%.

Source: novinky.cz