SummaryRobert Hanson is a Copenhagen police officer who, following a nervous breakdown, is transferred to a small provincial town to take on the mysteriously vacated Marshall position and subsequently gets mixed up with a married femme fatale. Robert’s big city temperament makes it impossible for him to fit in, or understand the uncivilized, bizarre beh... Read More
Directed By:Henrik Ruben Genz
Written By:Henrik Ruben Genz, Dunja Gry Jensen, Erling Jepsen
Terribly Happy
Metascore
Generally Favorable
74
User score
Generally Favorable
6.6
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Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
83% Positive
15 Reviews
15 Reviews
17% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
90
Not a horror movie but a witty, expertly constructed psychological thriller.
83
This is a smart, melancholy crime picture, which takes its cues from the title of the perverse old standard Christensen plays on her stereo at night: “You Always Hurt The One You Love.”
80
Entertaining and full of surprising twists, this highly cinematic tale of a Copenhagen policeman working punishment duty in the provinces plays with genre in a manner that can be compared with the Coen brothers or David Lynch.
75
Genz and Erling have constructed a story so clever that the pleasure of following its twists is enough in itself.
75
It may not sound funny, but there's a bleakly comic air about the story, and a bit of surrealism, suggesting the most caustic side of the Coen brothers.
70
An enjoyably involving mystery-thriller.
50
The characters are intended to be slightly stupid, but the writing isn’t necessarily smarter.
User score
Generally Favorable
50% Positive
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
50% Mixed
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
0% Negative
0 Ratings
0 Ratings
Jul 31, 2013
8
Its as if David Lynch has directed a unique, psychological thriller/western that oddly develops on the soggy plains of Copenhagen. "Terribly Happy" is a relentless and expressionless film noir, and may be the best pseudo-western that Denmark has ever sent our way. The plot nudges us to laugh at things that aren't funny, except they are, because we're not that hapless schmuck doing precisely the thing he shouldn't do in the exactly the wrong town. The setting is a remote Danish burg that's as bleak and crummy as most of its residents. Robert (Jakob Cedergren) is a Copenhagen police officer who transfers to a small provincial town to fill the position of the mysteriously vacated Marshall. He wants to be the good guy, but the citizens have their own ways of dispensing justice, and besides, there's a skeleton in Robert's closet he's been in trouble, and his new assignment is a kind of banishment. The townspeople are a gallery of surly grotesques living in fear of the town bully, Jørgen (Kim Bodnia), who habitually beats his wife, Ingelise (Lene Maria Christensen). She shows Robert her bruises and scars, and comes on to him. She wants his help and then doesn't want it she's one confused woman. We don't know who's telling the truth, and neither does Robert, who is advised to look the other way. Of course, he doesn't. Opportunities for compromise abound. Robert's big city temperament makes it impossible for him to fit in, or what to make of the bizarre behavior displayed by the town's people. As the storyline unfolds, it grows increasingly desperate and darkly comedic. The unease is undisguised, and you, like Robert, will fight it at first, but eventually be forced to accept it and just give in. Director Genz is perfectly paired with cinematographer Jørgen Johansson who captures the essence of trepidation and misery. To call this a dark comedy may be misleading because you won't be laughing out loud, but the humor keeps an unnerving undercurrent. An offbeat modern noir, and an unusually compelling portrait of a town that has its own sense of justice.
