All eras have their own commercially successful but critically despised hit films, the three Lapatossu movies being an old Finnish example of such silly entertainment cinema. Lapatossu (Aku Korhonen) is a laid-back railroad construction worker whose employer runs into trouble when a local female farm owner Laurila (Siiri Angerkoski) refuses to allow the tracks to be built across her lands. Utilizing his natural charm and a couple of disguises, Lapatossu takes it upon himself to convince her to change her mind. At the same time, Laurila's daughter Irja (Laila Rihte) dreams of a romance with a handsome engineer Tarkka (Eino Kaipainen) while being bugged by an effeminate city boy Heikki Heloheimo (Jorma Nortimo).
A lot of movies are built solely on the charisma of the stars, but rarely this obviously. Many of the earlier scenes feel like an unfinished workprint of what the final product could have been: the lack of non-diegetic music, slow pacing of the scenes and especially the poor timing of the individual jokes' punch lines make the jumbled plot a chore to follow. The style picks up towards the end though; the appearance of decent background music strongly emphasizes the importance of non-verbal aspects in comedy, as the jokes aren't really better at the end but with proper accompaniment they feel much funnier when compared to the awkward silences of the first two thirds of the runtime.
Aku Korhonen and Siiri Angerkoski are good as always, sure, but they alone cannot save this poorly directed attempt of a comedy from feeling painfully dated. The lispy Heikki could have been the most amusing of the supporting characters, but ultimately his storyline goes nowhere. Lapatossu's dim-witted sidekick Vinski (Kaarlo Kartio) doesn't get to do anything particularly funny either, so a brief CanCan performance of a ladies' dance troupe in a circus ends up being the most entertaining scene in the whole movie.
I have enjoyed many older Finnish comedies that often get poor reviews from modern critics, but in this case I cannot disagree with the accusations of neglecting good writing in favour of sloppily connected comedic situations. Korhonen does what he can and delivers many alright jokes, but at the end of the day, the overall lack of ambition renders Lapatossu a slapdash disappointment. Only for the biggest Aku and Siiri fans.
