At the Austin Fantastic Fest in Texas, America's most high-profiled genre film festival, you can expect a dedicated audience. At least this is true of the edition two years ago when "Chaos reigns" became the festival's unofficial slogan after the screening of Lars von Trier's "Antichrist".
And it is true of this year's edition, as "Clown" prompted out-loud laughs and enthused responses at the Fest last week, winning Mikkel Nørgaard's film the Best Comedy award and, to Frank Hvam and Casper Christensen, the Best Screenplay award. The two renouned stand-up comedians also feature as the film's main characters Frank and Casper who embark on a male-only canoe trip with disaster written all over it.
In July "Clown" picked up the main prize, the Cheval Blanc, at one of North America's other great genre festivals, the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.
A feature version of a popular six-season TV series, "Clown" is by far the best-selling Danish film in ten years with 855,000 tickets sold since its national release in December last year.
Reviews and reactions
"Probably the funniest movie I've seen all year," John Ary of Ain't It Cool TV reported from the Austin Fantastic Fest. "Lot's of twists and turns, you never know in which direction it's going to go." See clip below.
"The pic has earned more than $12 million at the B.O. in Scandinavian territories since December, which indicates a sequel is in order. Prospective North American buyers might have some cleaning up – or blurring out – to do." Variety
"'Clown' is one of the funniest deadpan comedies I've seen in a long time. The key is that the film is played absolutely straight, and it never stretches the bounds of credulity beyond their breaking point. This slice of life comedy is crude, inappropriate, disgusting, and ridiculously funny." Twitch
"The film is a hilarious riot, but garners its laughs with subtle, brilliant tastelessness. Structurally, the film resembles 'The Hangover', but with an ironically higher level of maturity. In many ways, 'Clown' combines the vulgarity of this style of comedy with the awkwardness of 'The Office' and the intelligence of Louis CK's TV series 'Louie'". We Are Movie GeeksAustin Fantastic Fest 22-29 September 2011