Summer with Gentleman

Summer with Gentleman certainly has ideas. That's not its problem. The distant memory of Summer with a Cowboy inspired another summer comedy... What's funny is how many people it was their first feature film (Adamec, Antalová...) and that it's more like a little TV film that looks like a poor relation to real films in the movie theaters. Hanzlík, on the other hand, wanted a relaxed, generational film for people who would be flattered just to meet their favorites again in similar roles they were used to seeing them in years ago. (22.01.2021)

I always liked Jaromír Hanzlík. I was looking forward to his cinematic comeback, so I'm disappointed that it didn't turn out particularly well. The script, which he wrote himself, unfortunately has a lot of weak spots, but I can't say that the story itself offends me in any way. If there weren't so many comparisons Summer with a Cowboy, which is much better and funnier, I'd give Summer with Gentleman at least a weaker three stars. I'm slowly reaching the age when I can identify with Anna played by Alena Antalová. (40%) (26.07.2021)

Although its supposed to be a summer comedy, the only funny thing about the film is that 70-year-old Jaromír Hanzlík is supposed to play the character of a mysterious charming seducer who picks up significantly younger women through his romantic poems and rides on the Vltava. Instead, for the duration of the film, Hanzlík acts more like a lewd psychopath who tours villages in an attempt to lure local married ladies to bed, and his character can be considered a relatively solid part of the film only because all the other male characters in the film are disgusting drunks. The casting of the main female character, played by a woman in her forties, is also extremely bizarre, because she evidently should be about age sixty. The rather miserable story is further interspersed with nonsense, unrelated digressions that lead nowhere and have nothing to do with the main storyline (debates between the villagers about the disposal of a cesspool, an attempt to get a funeral procession through the town square with carousels). The film openly states to women that suffering as a victim in a clearly toxic marriage is part of their job in life, because "anything is better than divorce." The drooling sexism goes hand in hand with low-brow humour, and the whole film is captured best through the last shot accompanying the closing captions, where a sewage truck spills poop across a field. (25.06.2020)

I quite like Jaromír Hanzlík as an actor, but I definitely won't praise him for this performance as a screenwriter and actor. If the script for this film wasn't a criminal offense, it was certainly a stimulus for the misdemeanor commission for committing crude violence against human taste. Even the opening fall from the bike was directed so poorly that it caused me physical pain. The dialogues were terrible, and I made up my mind about the evaluation after four minutes and twelve seconds. The "great" atmosphere was perfectly complemented by the chosen music, and everything was topped off, of course, by the meander of the Vltava river, the quarry, and Lucie Vondráčková. It's a shame that there weren't any funny scenes from the filming during the closing credits; I would have loved to see Jaromír Hanzlík's installation on top of a tree. I really couldn't find anything good about this matter, and I think even the garbage film overestimates it. But when Prima is the main partner, I can't expect a better outcome. (07.10.2021)