Chris Bryant | On 23, Feb 2016

Director: Feix Herngren
Cast: Robert Gustafsson, David Wiberg
Certificate: 15
Watch The 100-Year-Old Man… online in the UK: Amazon Prime / Apple TV (iTunes) / Prime Video (Buy/Rent) / Rakuten TV / Google Play

Allan Karlsson believes it doesn’t do well to overthink things. Or really think about them at all. He was told as a child, ‘it is what it is’. Part of this philosophy – as you may have already guessed – leads Allan to climb out of his nursing home window and start walking.

This could lead you to expect a sad and dangerous story about a senior citizen’s struggle in the world, but Allan is no ordinary hundred-year-old man. Utterly content, with a fondness for explosions, Allan’s Forrest Gump-esque life proves more than enough experience to deal with the problems he faces now, including but not limited to murderous biker gangs, an elephant, and Alan Ford.

Karlsson himself, played peacefully by Robert Gustafsson, is not particularly clever, or particularly adventurous. He relies almost totally on instinct and within minutes it’s clear that Allan is not scared of the outside world. If anything, it’s the outside world that should be scared of Allan. Based on an international best-selling novel, The Hundred-Year-Old Man is reminiscent of Bryan Fuller’s Pushing Daisies in both visual style, matter-of-fact voiceover and it’s controlled tackling of the morbid. Writer/director Felix Herngren performs his duties fantastically, taking an outrageous and oft brutal story and turning it into a carefully woven tale of his amazing travels, acquaintances and experiences.

Bright, vibrant and an immeasurable amount of fun, The Hundred-Year-Old Man is sharply adapted, ensuring that Allan’s ridiculous story never becomes overdone, nor that his life experiences – told via flashback – ever distract from his current predicament. It’s a long, winding tale that makes some very strange stops indeed and as the film concludes it’s made entirely that clear from his initial fox-warfare to his elephant-riding, from his dictator-befriending to his Oppenheimer-advice, it’s incredibly difficult not to see the hundred-year-old man who climbed out of a window and disappeared as a personal hero.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is available to watch online on Amazon Prime Video as part of a Prime membership or a £5.99 monthly subscription.

 

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