Cupid's Balls

While The Liverpool Goalie had a great plot, good humor as well as good direction and acting, this film, Cupids balls/Amors baller is an awful mess. The instruction of the actors are like an average Disney Channel sitcom, which means ridiculous, and the story is sickening. There's not even a bit of charm here, not even from Kåre Hedebrant, who did such a marvelous job in "Låt den rette komma in"/"Let me in" (the Swedish original title first.). Hedebrant is trying, but he falls out just plain and stupid, due to bad Script and directing. It's simply not believable, either the love story nor the plot. The manuscript and directing is awful, and what's ruining the film. The idea and the production value is OK. The dialog is so bad it makes me shrink both in the spine and elsewhere. The believability is none whatsoever. This shouldn't be necessary, as the film should be able bring good memories for this who have been at Norway cup, the worlds biggest soccer tournament. The dialog is not only bad and stupid, it's also profane and lame. The coaches for every team here is people that at no time should let near a footballground, making me believe this film was made by soccer haters. This is not worthy the time kids put into it. The similarly themed film The Liverpool Goalie is just a much better film, it's almost unbelievable that this atrocity was made in the same country, and even after that brilliant one. Do yourself a favor and stay away from this, if you like to keep your stomach content. This is a film which could make a film critic become a killer for no other reason than having to watch and review it.

The plot ins't that complicated and definitely nothing new, falling well into the "boy meets girl and falls for her" category. So in theory we could have a formulaic teenage rom-com. What in my opinion makes "Amors baller" stand out is the fact the story is developed in a very nice way, as actually seen through the eyes and the heart of young Lucas. Lucas casually meets the good-looking Susanne, who happens to play football, so he decides to be a football player too just to be around her. He doesn't really care about playing, actually he has NO football background and he'll end up being brought up to the big football tournament because (as the coach himself said) "there's plenty of room on the bench". During the tournament Lucas and Susanne get closer, but there's a catch... Susanne's boyfriend Petter is the captain and the leader of the male's team (the one with an actual shot at winning the prestigious Norway Cup). Susanne herself doesn't seem to care much about Petter, just as little as he cares about her. What matters is, however, the disruption the sentimental turmoil brings into the locker room... there's a final to play but nobody's in the right mindset to deliver. There's a high price to pay for Lucas' sentimental escapade... He comes to blows with Petter, he says hurtful words to Susanne and finally he even falls out with his (only) friend Stian, who, as coach-in-the-making, is worried about the locker room's harmony and is then outraged about Lucas chasing the captain's girl the night before the big game. In the end they'll all do the right thing and most loose threads will be resolved, but in a relatively soft "happy ending". All the characters will get something out of their adventure, but not really in a stereotyped and sappy "happily ever after"... The future is still much open, as it ought to be for teenagers. All in all the movie is an enjoyable coming-of-age story without the heavy-handedness of other similar flicks. Sure, there are a couple of flimsy bits (namely, the usual "pretty girl falls for goofy guy clearly below her league" one), but the plot is quite believable and most of the twists and turns are something real-life teenagers could or would do in the same situation. The shy guy trying to impress the girl, the "trophy girlfriend" who gets tired of her status, the unforgiving clique excluding and ribbing the new guy, the sex-starved guy, the self-absorbed star... All those are situations that can happen in real life, and the movie handles them in a very honest way, without cheesing them up too much. On a side-note, it was nice to see, for a change, a sport sub-plot where there's no underdog. The Grimsrud team is a serious contender for the trophy, and Lucas never steps in as the proverbial underdog who ends up scoring the winning point... Finally the "good guys" don't win the tournament, the main character doesn't save the day (actaully Lucas plays a couple of minutes of "garbage time" early in the tournament and doesn't even get the ball once...) and the ending isn't actually an ending... More like the end of a chapter and the beginning of a new one. "Amors Baller" is a decent teen flick that managed to avoid getting too sappy or too over the top. It's not a laugh-out-loud comedy, it's not a maudlin teen drama... Don't expect "American Pie", don't expect some pseudo-deep tripe like "All the real girls"... it's just a nice story and the closest you can get to realism while keeping it cinematically enjoyable. And in my book that's a good enough achievement for a teen movie. 7/10