Tone can often be the biggest challenge to
a director in assembling their film. An odd tone can be even more difficult to
balance. While walking on the tightrope of “odd” you have to be careful not to
fall into wacky but then you also don’t want to be so weird that you alienate
people. You don’t want to be weird for weirdness sake and you certainly don’t
want to be trying too hard. Men and
Chicken really is best described as odd. Does it walk this thin tightrope
carefully? Just about.

After the death of their father, two
brothers, Elias (Mads Mikkelson) and Gabriel (David Dencik) find out that he
was not their father. They go looking for their biological father, tracking him
down to an old asylum, filled with cheese and animals. There they find they
have three other brothers and they discover that all of their parentage might
not be traditional.

It’s rare to see Mads Mikkelson flexing his
comedic muscles. Now most well known as the classy serial killer Hannibal
Lector in the fantastic Hannibal TV
series, it is a pleasure to see him playing a comedic character. Elias is a
blunt and selfish character, a serial masturbator who is dependent on his
brother Gabriel. Gabriel is the intelligent and more social brother who happens
to have a pronounced gag reflex. Their brothers, Gregor (Nikolaj Lie Kass) the
most childlike of the three who wants female companionship, Josef (Nicolas Bro)
who is highly articulate and literary minded and Franz (Søren Malling) the head
of the three with a predilection to hitting people with stuffed birds are all
suitably weird and entertaining. With only a little bit of plot in the film,
the truth about the brothers’ true parentage providing a small if easily
guessable mystery, most of the film is taken up with a family drama as the five
brothers discover each other and come to terms with being related. Luckily, the
characters are fun to watch and prove enough entertainment to keep your
interest for a lot of the film.

Men
and Chicken is dark but its dark humour lies in a
vein of absurdity and it never forgets that it is also trying to be
entertaining so it doesn’t let a dour tone fall over proceedings. The film has
some ideas about God and human genetic meddling which are slightly touched upon
but not fully padded out. Its denouement also wraps itself up quite quickly
with a dose of sentimentality which doesn’t quite come off but it’s only a
slight duff note at the end of a largely enjoyable film.

Men
and Chicken is an enjoyably odd film. It has a
slightly taxing running time and is a little formless in plot but it is
enjoyably strange and surprisingly dark with a cast of entertaining characters
from a game cast.

MEN AND CHICKEN / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR AND SCREENWRITER: ANDERS THOMAS JENSON / STARRING: DAVID DENCIK, MADS MIKKELSEN, NIKOLAJ LIE KAAS, SOREN MALLIN, NICOLAS BRO / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW