Bet on Friendship

One of the best Czech films (comedy) in recent years. Great characters, mid-life crisis, funny, touching, entertaining and well acted. I recommend it. The film and the premise are on par, and most importantly it features about 50 Czech well-known actors, which was a damn pleasure. Hofmann again is the best. 8/10. (12/20/2021)

Composition of chatterboxes and perpetually dissatisfied men, who would like everything and everyone to fall into their lap on one side. On the other side, a sad composition of women who dare to occasionally ask something of men. And when they visually or by expectation deviate from the norm, they voluntarily wait in the corner or even beg. Patrik Hartl may be writing and filming erotic or life desires and goals, but the result is so unpleasantly toxic that I will rather avoid him in a wide arc. The author's massive popularity in a package of almost-values presented is quite terrifying to me, but unfortunately also explanatory within the aggressive twenties. (08/06/2023)

This is when 4 friends get together at a class reunion; they're all in their 40s but acting like they're 6 years old. And I had the feeling that the time machine had taken me back to the time of the Czech director Poledňáková, when all men - regardless of age - were presented as "cute little guys". Only, there was some development in the females. These were not Poledňáková’s wise and understanding mothers as we know them (although one of them was aspiring to the Gandhi Award), instead they were angry, scared, upset or pushy. The plot doesn't make sense and nor do the background antics; dramatic interludes don't belong in this type of movie and it's further undermined by the performances of the adored actors whose acting in any movie never gets any further than being perpetually pissed. So they didn't come up with anything original here either. IN A NUTSHELL: How to voluntarily make a jerk of yourself to please your high school classmates... Oh, right, of course... Making a jerk of themselves was clearly not too much effort for these protagonists. (03/23/2023)

Patrik Hartl's film tells, in a rather artful way, the story of four friends who arrive in their lives at the Midlife Crisis station, trying to come to terms with this unwanted but almost necessary stop. Each member of the central quartet had a major problem in their life story, and their actors really inhabited their characters well – Hynek Čermák definitely impressed me the most, with Martin Pechlát close behind. Although the film has a comedy genre in its profile, it offers a lot of dramatic scenes in which the four protagonists try to grapple with "adult" problems using childish challenges and "heckling matches". The first challenge didn't quite work for me, but I was happy with the dramatic-comedic construction of the rest of the film. By Czech standards, an eminently believable film with solid performances and a a plot that is not shallow. (07/31/2021)

In the last two days, besides this movie, I've also seen Sweethearts. And that kinda forces me to give Prvok and Co. an extra star, because the difference is just huge. Okay, sometimes I didn’t quite catch the humor, but otherwise I enjoyed it quite a bit. A good ensemble, the charismatic Hofmann... I'll gladly give it another go and I’m looking forward to seeing Patrik's next film. More than his next book. (02/27/2022)