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Comedy isn’t exactly the first genre that springs to mind when you think of the Danish film industry. Yet, Anders Thomas Jensen’s film Men & Chicken is most certainly that. Granted, it’s a deeply dark comedy featuring death, perversion, abusive families, sadness, and Mads Mikkelsen. So, despite the laughs, it’s very much a project that will appeal to those who adore the special brand of cinematic misery delivered by the dastardly Danes. It’s a deeply weird and perverse movie designed to tickle the funny bones of viewers who are just as sick as the filmmakers.
AVClub: American movies and television almost invariably use Mads Mikkelsen for his steely Euro-charisma. The actor’s most notable roles here—Hannibal Lecter and Casino Royale’s Le Chiffre—combine danger with elegance, creating characters meant to be both admired and feared. At home in Denmark, however, Mikkelsen gets to show off a considerably wider range, especially when he works with prolific writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen. Men & Chicken is their eighth collaboration (including films Jensen wrote but didn’t direct, like The Salvation), and it almost seems expressly designed as a vehicle for Mikkelsen to play someone as far removed from his Hollywood persona as humanly possible, to the point where “humanly” could be considered less than 100 percent accurate. Alas, his performance is this black comedy’s only point of interest. The film is grotesque and bizarre without ever really being funny, and while the sight of Mikkelsen as a nebbishy loser is initially bracing, the novelty wears off fast, leaving little else.
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That said, there’s a time and place for letting your freak flag fly, but Men & Chicken just isn’t the kind of familial existentialism that gets me excited. May your experience be a more illuminating one, masturbatory story breaks and all. God speed.
