Wide Blue Yonder

This is a very fun film that goes overboard (yep, a pun) far too often. It's too bad. It could have been an excellent film about smart feisty older folk who take charge of their own lives when eejits try to overrule them to prove their power and make more money.

That said, there were some bursts of brilliance, thank goodness! And many good laughs. One of the best was the opening scene. It was a great action scene (YES!! I said action scene - it's all relative).

Brian Cox is at his uninhibited Scottish best.

This is a fun film to watch to just watch. Don't take anything too seriously. If only there had been a bit more care to take out the slapstick, it could have been a great one! Enjoy it anyway!

Wide Blue Yonder is a light hearted black comedy not with out charm. A British-Norwegian co-operation, with English dialog all through, and star power de luxe.

And old sea man without any family left, Skip, has just passed away on the old peoples home, where we also find his friends with his Scottish born buddy Wally (Brian Cox) as a front runner. Wally has promised his old friend a proper sea mans' burial out at sea, something the attendant of the home won't allow. He gather his friends in a cunning plan to get Skip buried out in the wet North Sea, instead of in the cold ground.

The cast consist of well known actors and comedians Brian Fox, Lauren Bacall, James Fox, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Sverre Anker Ousdal, Kåre Conradi, Nicholas Hope, Robert Skjærstad, Hege Schøyen, Elsa Lystad, Ane Rygh an so on, as well as additional cameos of comedians like "the Norwegian Rowan Atkinson" Øyvind Blunck.

What a cast! And they all do their job, though I think the comical timing would have helped with some Norwegian dialog as well, this being a story filmed in the western Norwegian town of Haugesund. (Where the Norwegian International Film Festival is held in September every year. This film was of course picked out for the program in 2012.) Yeah, in 2012, two years after it was finished, because this film production came in severe problems both financially and due to fights with the actors unions. Due to the financial crisis, one of the production companies went bankrupt, and the film was finally saved by distributor Europa Film and the Norwegian investor Ola Sandvold, which actually was an extra in this film. He reached down his pockets to fulfill the last economical barriers.

Filming was done i 2007. The release was delayed for almost five years, and maybe also therefore, this film was only released in UK, Norway and USA, all quite limited releases. It was also shown at the Cannes Film Festival and FilmFest Emden.

At the premiere, the films' problems was more interesting to the media than the actual film, and critics gave mostly thumbs down. So is it a bad movie?

No it isn't. Still the film is annoyingly enough blemished with a bad poster, bad music in a not very well suited classic music score, like the film is filmed out in the open ocean, and some of the comical timing is lost in Norwegians trying to talk English with their best accents. When this is noted, it's quite a charming little film. It's always a pleasure to see these actors giving of their best. Not a master piece by far, but still a pleasant watch a Sunday afternoon. The film gets more funnier the longer it lasts, and is more charming than black.

The film gives homages to well known films like Superman and Four Weddings... as well as putting Øyvind Blunck as priest. You remember Atkinson in that role?

The film could be seen for free online at the film's official website for some time, but it's taken down now.

I almost turned off Wild Blue Yonder (aka All at Sea) which atm is available to watch free with an Amazon Prime membership. It started out unneccessarily slapstick dark humor with very implausible scenes such as illegally appropriating a coffin complete with its deceased occupant and then placing the coffin in the back of a pickup truck and "stealing it" from a already-in-progress cemetery service. There is a need for suspension of disbelief in most movies, and the early scenes were over the top. And yet I stuck with this film mostly because of the unexpected appearance of James Fox early in the film, who happens to be an actor I like, and then also because of Lauren Bacall, and I'm SO GLAD i did stick with this movie.

Alot of the movie continues in this slapstick over the top fashion, but as I am 60 y/o myself, I was able to forgive the slapstick and categorize it as overstated metaphors whether intended or unintended, for the teriible dilemmas of getting old and losing self-determination by degrees, and the way younger people usurp the rights of the "walking-elderly" even when they are still quite lucid and capable, solely because they disapprove of a viewpoint or a conduct. I don't want to overstate that element of the film - it's pretty lighthearted fun really - but there are relevant aging themes of course that are handled quite well through this slapstick yet dramatic mechanism.

Where the movie really shines unexpectedly and very movingly, is in the intermittent and very expressive scenes between Ingrid Bolsø Berdal as "Nina" and her soulmate. Kåre Conradi as Ben. These scenes have a very "Mamma Mia" vignette-type quality to them, and these are actually little "mini-movies" of their own, as they totally independent scenes, not rich in storyline, but bursting with richness in visual imagery, the counterpoint of youth to aged, and the narrative of how some of the young come to the aid of the elderly on the terms of the elderly. This dynamic in the movie does a great job of contrasting those who would suppress the elderly with those who seem to be aware that they too will one day be elderly, and are paying it forward even as they celebrate their youth. I don't want to say too much about the exact details of this other thread about Nina and Ben except to say that it salvage and empower this movie to reclaim a measure of greatness.

The movie imho is metaphorical and allegorical, and if you watch the whole movie, you find that it achieves all of it's goals. The performances of James Fox did not disappoint he was excellent. Lauren Bacall is so talented and charming and she delivered a solid performance as well.

For reasons that are not immediately clear, this has only just (in 2019) had a release at cinemas in the UK and to be honest, it isn't really a cinema film. The comedic performances by Brian Cox are all the more appreciable because they are so unlike anything he has done elsewhere; his dancing around in his underwear (and we are not talking Calvin Klein, here!) cannot help but make you smile. Otherwise it is a gentle old-age rebellion film with occasional appearances by Lauren Bacall with James Fox making for a decent, if rather typecast, foil to Cox. Ideal for telly between Christmas and New Year to make you feel good.

Brian Cox plays a happy go lucky salty sea dog who is determined to bury his recently departed best friend at sea, against the wishes of just about everyone.

Whimsical, gently comedy with some funny lines and scenes occasionally punctuated with just about palatable sentiment. It lacks an element of panache that it badly needs, but the cast are fine, it's nice to see Lauren Bacall and all in all makes for a pleasant but hardly groundbreaking 90 minutes.