Adam’s Apples strives for black comedy, but winds up being neither funny nor spiritually enlightening.
Adam's Apples (2007)
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Reviews Counted:34
Fresh:24
Rotten:10
Average Rating:6.2/10
Consensus: Good and evil collide with interesting results in Adam's Apples, a dark Biblical allegory that’s alternatively funny and shocking.
Runtime: 1 hr 34 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: Sentenced to community service at a small, countryside church, Adam, a middle-aged neo-Nazi, is warmly welcomed by the cheerful vicar, Ivan. Although Adam is crude, full of hostility, and clearly... Sentenced to community service at a small, countryside church, Adam, a middle-aged neo-Nazi, is warmly welcomed by the cheerful vicar, Ivan. Although Adam is crude, full of hostility, and clearly beyond redemption, Ivan encourages him to choose a goal that will occupy his time there. When Adam dismissively replies that he will bake an apple pie, Ivan assigns him the task of nurturing the church's lone apple tree. If by the time this unassuming tree has been attacked by crows, infested with maggots, and struck by lighting, you are not reasonably certain it has become the battleground for a fiercely irreverent struggle between good and evil, then you have not had the pleasure of meeting an Anders Thomas Jensen film. With a supporting bunch of characters that includes an Arab immigrant who routinely robs gas stations and a chubby former tennis pro and sex addict, this glib parable of religion and human nature plays out with wit and sophistication. Into Adam and Ivan (played with deadpan perfection by Ulrich Thomsen and Mads Mikkelsen), Jensen deposits competing philosophies. Ivan, whose absurd philosophical optimism would have Voltaire falling out of his pew, interprets events as the devil testing people. Adam shakes his unflappable faith by suggesting that evil simply doesn't exist. Adam's Apples is a wickedly dark comedy by one of cinema's most exciting directors. Following its hugely successful theatrical release in Denmark in April 2005, Adam's Apples received its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005. Since Cannes, the picture has played at festivals around the world, from Toronto and Sundance to Sydney and Seattle, picking up many awards along the way, including 3 Danish Academy Awards, Best Film and Best Actor honors, and numerous Audience Awards. Adam's Apples will open exclusively at the Clearview Chelsea in New York on March 16, and this will be followed by exclusive engagements in Los Angeles and Boston on April 13th, and San Francisco on May 11th, with additional cities following. -- © Outsider Pictures [More]
Starring: Nicolaj Kaas, Ali Kazim, Paprika Steen, Ulrich Thomsen
Starring: Nicolaj Kaas, Ali Kazim, Paprika Steen, Ulrich Thomsen, Ole Thestrup, Mads Mikkelsen
Director: Anders Thomas Jensen
Director: Anders Thomas Jensen
Producer: Mie Andreasen, Tivi Magnusson
Screenwriter: Anders Thomas Jensen
Composer: Jeppe Kaas
Studio: Outsider Pictures
Reviews for Adam's Apples
Smart-aleck comedy and spirituality aren't incompatible, but in Adam's Apples they cancel each other out.
I'm sure there's a decent black comedy in the material, but Adam's Apples, by Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen, isn't it.
As intelligent as it is entertaining, and it's the source of great good humor.
Designed to elicit as many gasps as laughs, Anders Thomas Jensen's pitch-black comedy offers an audaciously skewed take on good vs. evil.
Peculiar but oddly winsome fable about the spiritual journeys of two diametrically opposed characters.
For all its roughhouse antics, Adam's Apples is almost improbably sweet: a rude comedy that the devout and heathen alike can hold to their breasts.
With the most bizarre characters we have seen in film for quite some time, this strange comedy leaves the viewer constantly off- balance.
Features some nice humor, dry as an Empire apple left to wither and brown at room temperature, its juice sucked out but still pleasant to the taste.
Go-to screenwriter for the Dogma 95 collective, Danish writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen hits a decidedly sour note with Adam's Apples.
I just wasn't, it turns out, the ideal audience for man's allegorical way of dealing with the demonic weightiness of the world.
An odd, blacker-than-black comedy that's almost impossible to describe.
Adam ends up learning a lot of important life lessons, but this isn't sappy storytelling.
Adam’s Apples slams together good and evil for maximum black-comedy impact.
Jensen doesn't pretend it's cute and/or harmless -- there's a fascinating ambiguity to the happy fantasy laid over the misery and failure.
We have a comedy black enough to make even the most jaded viewer cringe a little.
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