The new comedy from director Henrik Olsson refuses the heavy-handed comic mechanics that contemporary studio comedy has defaulted to. The result is a film that trusts its audience to notice the comedy rather than to be told where the comedy is. The trust is rewarded.

What it does

The film works in the register of careful situational comedy. The setups are constructed deliberately; the punchlines emerge from situations rather than from joke writing; the timing is calibrated to allow audiences to register the comedy at their own pace.

What it does not do

It does not lean on improvised dialogue, on aggressive scoring to indicate the comic moments, or on the kind of editing that contemporary studio comedy uses to mark every joke. The film trusts that audiences who are paying attention will catch what the film is doing.

The performances

The performances are calibrated to the film's overall sensibility. The principal cast plays each scene at the pace the script calls for rather than overplaying for laughs the writing has already earned.

The verdict

The film is the kind of comedy that contemporary studio production rarely supports. The audience that meets the film on its terms will be rewarded; the audience expecting the harder-working version of comedy may find the experience too understated. Both responses are reasonable; the first is the response the film is built for.