10 timer til Paradis (2012) Reviews

• As its title suggest; this is a very cute movie.

  Boba_Fett11382012-09-11

  This is absolutely a simplistic and very straightforward movie, that you can put under the slice of life, type of category. All of the drama, characters and events feel real and are also being kept deliberately small and realistic. The movie its title is very fitting. It might sound strange for a movie that focuses on an Arnold Schwarzenegger sized body builder to have such a title but the main character, despite of his imposing size, is being a true teddy bear! A gentle giant who never gets mad at anything or anyone. He's the type of guy that always comes across as friendly but shy and he's also the type of friendly guy people can easily take advantage of, since he can't really say no to anything. He's all very well aware of this but it's just simply part of his personality and he doesn't have the right social skills to change anything about it. I do believe that many people, to some extend, can identify with the movie its main character, which to me was also the foremost reason why the movie worked out so effectively. Despite his appearance, the main character seems to lack true confidence, which also makes him uncomfortable around women and maybe is also being part of the reason why he still, at the age of 38, lives at home with his mother, stuck in the situation. I wouldn't at all be surprised if he never had a true relationship with a woman, which hurts him inside. He definitely wants to be with someone and wants to give his love and be able to express himself to someone other than his loving mother. He's not a loser type of person and watching this movie is not as depressing as I am perhaps making it sound right now. Like so many other people out there, he's simply searching for love and true happiness but he's looking at the wrong places for it. He is very well aware of this as well but the urge to find someone to be with is too big to resist any longer. I wouldn't call him desperate, that sounds too negative for my taste but it's more like that nothing else so far has worked out for him, so he begins looking where lots of lonely and somewhat social awkward, middle aged men look for 'love'; Thailand. I know I talk a lot about the movie its main character but that simply is because he's the heart and center of the movie and everything that goes on in this movie truly revolves around him. Due to circumstances and his personality he gets himself needlessly into trouble at times. The sort of trouble that is easy to avoid but he doesn't want to heart anybody and he's obviously a pleaser who wants to make everybody feel good, even if that means lying to a person who you care about. Kim Kold is a true force to reckon with, mainly due to his size and screen presence. I'm pretty sure in certain scenes they exaggerated this a bit for dramatic effect but there is no denying this is one big guy and it's of course no big surprise Kold himself actually is a bodybuilder in real life. I'm not saying he will be the new and next Schwarzenegger but I truly think he should be given a chance in a bigger- and international production. No doubt this movie will be the Danish Oscar contender this year, for best foreign language movie and by all means it should be! It's a very cute and heartfelt, straightforward movie, with real people and real life situations, that are all very easy to identify with. 8/10

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• This is a gentle and elegant movie, not a plot movie, not a story movie

  rickyvee2012-08-29

  It's a "feeling" movie. It's about a mood, a feeling. Inside one person, searching for it in another person. The feeling is gentleness. And the pervasive powerful, insistent sense of it coming out of such a person, is just... amazing. It's totally a visual movie. The content and plot are nothing to be concerned with, they are Normal. Watch how Abnormal this guy is. Watch how he persistently avoids the Normal and finds another person like himself. (She's actually quite a bit more normal than he is) He is a Mountain, a Monument of abnormality, dedicated to being gentle in a world that is almost completely unable to let me (or any of us, for the matter) be gentle. And it's Not just his nature, it's also a dedication. And somehow he Uses that bodybuilding to reinforce his gentleness. He Moves gently. It's quite a performance. I have no idea who he is, or what he actually is like, nor do I care. But here, he and the director have built... and elephant of a person. Huge, powerful, and gentle. Joy to watch.

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• Inhibitions, an overbearing mother, feeling your age--this is moving in its simplicity

  secondtake2013-04-09

  Teddy Bear (2012) And you thought you were shy? This guy, who is all about power and presence, a massive bodybuilder, is a social misfit afraid of his own shadow. And I believe it. I almost felt sorry for the actor, forgetting the difference. I suppose the story from the outside is overly simple--an aging bodybuilder is looking for love, but his overbearing (and tiny) mother doesn't want him to move out and move on. So he is kind and kinder and stays and yet he has some kind of need to have a girlfriend that won't just go away. With the secret help of an uncle, he makes a trip to Thailand. And here he meets girls, but he can hardly speak, and nothing comes of it. The second day there he finds a weightlifting gym and asks if he can work out. And all of a sudden he is at ease and himself. And things go from there, not in any unexpected way. All of this is told with such touching restraint it makes you really involved. The leading man, Kim Kold, obviously a bodybuilder (like Schwarzenegger, you can't fake that stuff), is really good at playing an exceedingly quiet guy, but not a stupid one. He is going to be in a Hollywood movie ("Fast and Furious 6") this year, and who knows whether it'll be a first step or a last one. It seems like, just because of his Hulk shaped body, he has a future at least as a character actor. The movie, all told, might lack some kind of storytelling nuance. It is what it is on purpose, but so much so it sometimes floats a little. This kind of Indie style often works just the way life does--things are interesting, watching some new people do some new things in an undistracted way is going to be watchable. And this does that, and well. It's because of its sincerity that you have some kind of emotional connection. But there is no magic, either, the way some films use small casts and simple touching plots and also find a way to lift the experience into something rare. (I'm thinking here of a similar movie about an aging wrestler in South America, "Bad Day to Go Fishing," which I highly recommend.) I don't know the Danish film world much except that we, in the U.S., seem to get the cream of the crop and so the few I've seen have all been exceptional. I'd give this a look.

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• Masculine?

  wesleyschooler2012-02-07

  Teddy Bear highlights and shows the life of a professional body builder in his attempt to find love amidst his massive muscles and odd profession. His search ends up taking him to Thailand where he ends up finding a lovely Thai woman who shares his interest in love. The true problem is not his muscles in his quest for love, but his codependent relationship with his petite mother, who is the real hindrance to finding love. It appears that she wants all his love to herself and won't let him free. She won't let her baby boy "fly", and "Teddy Bear" hasn't learned how to fly, metaphorically speaking. The mother of the body builder has an emotional hold on his life and his heart. Every decision, or it appears every feeling that 'Teddy Bear" has, must be run and checked through his mother. He emotionally cannot escape the grasps of his mother's reigns. Throughout the film he battles his inner beast by trying to escape the grasp of his mother in order to find love by traveling to Thailand and even hiding his girlfriend from his mother in an apartment. In the end, "Teddy Bear" ends up escaping the co-dependent cycle with his mother by moving out of his mother's house and moving in with his girlfriend and finds his love. The true beauty of this film is found in it's theme of masculinity. The film redefines what it means to be a male. We have the image of a massive body builder being ruled and dominated by nothing more than a 90 pound woman. All he desires is love and freedom. In his quest he never uses his muscles or size to break free from the emotional tyranny. It is his heart and mind that breaks free from his mother and flies towards dreams of love. The woman he ends up falling in love with is no bigger than a thimble. The same message is told in his love life. Love has nothing to do with power. It's a beautiful reminder and example to all male's that masculinity has nothing to do with physical prowess. It's a good reminder to all male's that being a true male means using your heart is a passive manner. Love and freedom manifest through thought and emotion, not power and anger. Hopefully people who view this film will redirect their view of masculinity. It has to do with the intellect and matters of the heart. Lastly, and on a cheesy note. I think the film maker was trying to tell a story that we are all capable of finding love regardless of our background, family issues, and current situations. Big or small, trapped or free, love is possible.

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• "Some day love will find you; break those chains that bind you"

  StevePulaski2012-12-07

  "Some day love will find you; break those chains that bind you" - "Separate Ways," Journey. I hope and wish on the brightest star I see tonight that Mads Matthiesen's Teddy Bear finds an audience not only in its home-country of Denmark, but in America, which is so accustomed to its spontaneous, mostly empty cinema that it's ridiculously easy and sickeningly common for small, human-driven pictures like this to go far below the radar. This is a stunning, poignant, masterful work involving immensely undiscovered talent, sensitive writing, smooth directing, and a storyline that is pure and viably sustainable when taken in the format presented. Dennis is a thirty-eight year old bodybuilder, living with his controlling, domineering mother (Elsebeth Steentoft) who has kept him a shy, secluded introvert his entire life. Despite boasting a strong, incredibly toned exterior, his interior paints a feeble man three times smaller than him. He has never had a true relationship, and slogs through his days depressed and uninspired. His morose feelings only heighten upon visiting his uncle's wedding to a lovely Thai woman, and not long after, seeing his nephew so lonely and melancholy in live, encouraging Dennis to travel to Thailand to try and meet some women. He lies and tells his mother that he will be competing in a bodybuilding competition in Germany, and then quickly boards a plane to Thailand. A close friend of his uncle's attempts to set him up with several different girls, but the fact they're all prostitutes unsettles Dennis and he becomes nervous and hasty around all of them. He finally meets a young, genial soul named Toi (Lamaiporn Sangmanee Hougaard), who owns a gym, and he believes he has found the one he'd love to form a relationship with; now if only his mother will approve of it. Dennis is played by former bodybuilder Kim Kold to a bold, graciously welcoming extent. His character greatly reminds me of myself in some ways; he hungers for the attention of the opposite sex, but is unsure of how to balance it and handle it all once obtaining it. He struggles to maintain a consistent conversation, is notably tense and socially inept during the simplest little get-together, and feels gridlocked to long pauses and dialog that lacks confidence. This is a negative affect of the heavy nurturing of his mother, who seems to keep him well-fed and unambitious in not his dreams but his social life. The way writers Matthiesen and Martin Zandvliet handle this delicate material is astonishingly poetic and nuanced. They stray far, far away from shouting matches between Dennis and his mother about "taking care of me" and other mother-son issues, and fights between Dennis and Toi about "growing up." We see from our scenes with them together that Toi knows exactly what the deal is between Dennis and his mom and prefers not to further belittle him for the minor baggage. She'd much rather go the extra mile to make the relationship as a whole work well. Teddy Bear is also photographed with that beautifully melodic foreign film sensitivity that combines minimalist cinematography and gorgeously showcased settings that add fuel to this as a visually compelling picture much less a narratively compelling one. But it's inexcusable to note the majority of the film's success comes from its leading man, Kold, who completely handles this role with the utmost capability and realism. He provides us with one of the finest performances of the year, and with one of the year's most likable protagonists as well. Starring: Kim Kold, Lamaiporn Sangmanee Hougaard, and Elsebeth Steentoft. Directed by: Mads Matthiesen.

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