I was really disappointed by this film. The opening 10 minutes are really impressive, and had me expecting something intelligent, angry and well-crafted. Dries is great amoral protagonist, Jan is genuinely likable and Dorpe becomes a truly tragic figure. The dialogue is mostly quite economical and the cinematography is fabulous throughout.
Having Koen walk around on his ceiling is a great idea but some of the other devices are just visual gags. The "transgressive" stuff is a real mixture. There are parts that a heartbreakingly sad and awful, but a lot of it is just puerile jokes about genitals.
In fact Ex Drummer is much more of a straightforward comedy than I was expecting. And the humour is mostly about (a) inappropriate use of language (gosh!), (b) a young man being attracted to an overweight, older woman (eww!), (c) outsize or unpleasant genitals (woah!). It's like Driller Killer meets The Inbetweeners. The meeting is not a success.
There's a fairly explicit threesome sex scene that's only there to titillate, as far as I can see, since like Driller Killer's lesbian shower scene it adds pretty much nothing to plot or characterisation. It did, though, add to a general whiff of misogyny that I felt was hanging around the film even after you looked past the deliberate attempts to offend.
The story is a bit of a mess. Without wishing to post spoiler, let's just say that it sets up a lot of tensions and possibilities that it doesn't bother to explore and ends up going for a set-piece ending that doesn't really make any dramatic sense. That's OK if you're finding the penis jokes delightful and/or edgy, but if not then it's a bit frustrating.
There are some great scenes of punk bands playing punk music. There are a few really bracing moments and some quite crazy ideas. The performances were compelling (I was watching with subtitles). You get a real sense of the locations. As I've mentioned above, there are other good things here too.
For me, though, the film as a whole failed to live up to its promise. Don't get me wrong, I got a kick out of it, but from some of the reviews here I was expecting little short of a masterpiece. Maybe I was expecting too much. If you sit down to it with a few beers and mates for some laughs, some gross-out and some disorganised stuff to think about I imagine it'll be fine. This might be a case of the hype spoiling the movie for me, although I genuinely think there's a more serious film here struggling to get out.
Having Koen walk around on his ceiling is a great idea but some of the other devices are just visual gags. The "transgressive" stuff is a real mixture. There are parts that a heartbreakingly sad and awful, but a lot of it is just puerile jokes about genitals.
In fact Ex Drummer is much more of a straightforward comedy than I was expecting. And the humour is mostly about (a) inappropriate use of language (gosh!), (b) a young man being attracted to an overweight, older woman (eww!), (c) outsize or unpleasant genitals (woah!). It's like Driller Killer meets The Inbetweeners. The meeting is not a success.
There's a fairly explicit threesome sex scene that's only there to titillate, as far as I can see, since like Driller Killer's lesbian shower scene it adds pretty much nothing to plot or characterisation. It did, though, add to a general whiff of misogyny that I felt was hanging around the film even after you looked past the deliberate attempts to offend.
The story is a bit of a mess. Without wishing to post spoiler, let's just say that it sets up a lot of tensions and possibilities that it doesn't bother to explore and ends up going for a set-piece ending that doesn't really make any dramatic sense. That's OK if you're finding the penis jokes delightful and/or edgy, but if not then it's a bit frustrating.
There are some great scenes of punk bands playing punk music. There are a few really bracing moments and some quite crazy ideas. The performances were compelling (I was watching with subtitles). You get a real sense of the locations. As I've mentioned above, there are other good things here too.
For me, though, the film as a whole failed to live up to its promise. Don't get me wrong, I got a kick out of it, but from some of the reviews here I was expecting little short of a masterpiece. Maybe I was expecting too much. If you sit down to it with a few beers and mates for some laughs, some gross-out and some disorganised stuff to think about I imagine it'll be fine. This might be a case of the hype spoiling the movie for me, although I genuinely think there's a more serious film here struggling to get out.