THE MISFORTUNATES (Felix Van Groeningen). 108 minutes. Subtitled. Opens Friday (April 9). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNN
As a rule, kids don’t know they’re having shitty childhoods. Lacking any other frame of reference, they’ll put up with almost anything and consider it normal it’s only when they grow up and look back that they realize not everyone was raised by a perpetually drunken father and his three no-account brothers in a small Belgian village fond of naked bicycle races.
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That’s the premise of Felix Van Groeningen’s The Misfortunates, a lively if uneven coming-of-age tale about 13-year-old Gunther Strobbe (Kenneth Vanbaeden), whose life circa 1986 is defined by his chaotic household. He spends a lot of time among men who can’t be bothered with social conventions like leaving the table before relieving themselves if there’s drinking to be done. Their elderly mother would prefer they didn’t, but irresponsible unsocialized adults will be irresponsible unsocialized adults, right?
Adapting a novel by Dimitri Verhulst, director Felix Van Groeningen and co-writer Christophe Dirickx spend most of their time celebrating the anarchic glee of Gunther’s family. Emphasizing rampant alcoholism and casual pranking, long stretches of The Misfortunates play like a Flemish reworking of Trailer Park Boys.
It’s only when the film needs to get serious – in glimpses of a 20-something Gunther struggling with the announcement of his own impending fatherhood – that it comes up a little short. Flash-forwards impose perspective, and you get the feeling that The Misfortunates would really rather be goofing around with Gunther’s dad and uncles instead of dwelling on their legacy of offhanded neglect.