Comeback is the newest newcomer to the series of Finnish band films.
Drama, Comedy
Comeback. Directed by Petri Kotwica. 98 min. K12.
★★
Comeback is a light drama comedy about tired rock musicians who have seen better days and who still dream of returning to the stage with new songs. Soon we will be on the road and the film will become a road movie, which has to balance between a crazy comedy and a feel-good movie for the whole family. In the end, the film is neither.
The first thing that comes to mind is the movie Have a nice trip (2018), but Comeback is just as funny at times.
Dreams are made to come true, say one stupider aphorism, and Comeback is at its best when it embraces silliness. It offers that Mikko Leppilammen played by Tony, who is Andy McCoy-like, messes up stadium slang and English, and has a substance abuse problem. Leppilampi overacts with obvious purpose, and in Tony’s case it works right down to the chalk lines.
The movie gives by far the most camera time for Tony and Ville Myllyrinten for acting Pete. Myllyrinne again does a poker-faced comedy performance faithful to his style.
There is also Paula Vesala played by Katarina, but nothing can be said about Vesala’s performance, because Katarina is in a coma in the hospital for almost the entire movie.
Young Anni Iikkanen plays Katarina’s daughter Ellie, who becomes the sidekick character of Leppilammen’s Tony and Myllyrinne’s Pete’s trip. Iikkanen does his best with the given material, and these three actors carry the entire film as far as they can.
Supervisor Petri Kotwica the scenes of dry humor can be rhythmically mostly clever, but the film as a whole suffers from jumping between different registers. It can’t decide what it wants to be. This is particularly evident in the glued-on thriller subplot involving the director of an orphanage Pamela Tola. It comes out of nowhere, suddenly escalates at the end of the film, and is immediately resolved for the best. Feeling? Precious minutes of humor were wasted here.
Because dreams are made to come true, they come true, even if it means stealing more cars and breaking into properties while broadcasting live on social media. The end of the film bursts with clichés and cuteness, starting with the healing of the coma with tears. The mixture is so strong that only a couple more ingredients would have been needed and we would have reached absurd comic silliness, which the film as a whole missed. Now the ending is just laughable, that is, in the sense of not laughing.
Katarina, played by Paula Vesala, is in a coma in the hospital for almost the entire film.
The shooting style of the film is also amazingly cramped and soap opera-like, as if it was made with the idea that everyone will watch the movie on TV anyway, forgetting the idea of memorable angles and using both foreground and background.
Being a soap opera is a big weakness, especially when Mari Perankoski the acting band goes after Tony and his friends with a tractor and a shotgun. It’s not funny or exciting at any point, even though at the level of thought it could produce a comedy of alternating current.
It’s a shame that one clumsily done sheep run-over makes for a funnier moment than a chase lasting several scenes.
However, I enjoyed the idea that cuts through the film that the music of HIM and other bands like it is nothing more than sleazy nostalgia for people in their 50s.
That’s what it is.
Screenplay Petri Karra and Aleksi Bardy, producer Aleksi Bardy / Helsinki Filmi, starring Mikko Leppilampi, Ville Myllyrinne, Anni Iikkanen and Pam
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