Magyar vándor (2004)

Unfortunately there is no zero rating, what I would gladly give to this film. It's not a "so bad, it's good" film. It's just simply bad. Don't be tempted to see it, even if you have an hour and a half of your life to be wasted. Believe me, compared to this rubbish the Bridges of Madison is an indie European cult film. The "Magyar Vandor" is pretentious, copying ideas from Holy Grail (and by copying I mean simply lifting out jokes and whole passages from it and putting them in Magyar Vandor shamelessly), Faust (or it's Hungarian version, the Ember Tragediaja) and many more. There are "jokes", you would understand only if you are Hungarian. But if you happen to be one, you won't enjoy them, as the filmmakers thought their future audience to be a bunch of retarded five year old. (a good example for this is the scene with king Matyas, an emblematic figure of the Hungarian history. If you wouldn't recognise the character after five minutes of shallow jokes the actor puts on his crown and the camera pans to show his long nosed profile - aka king Matyas' most recognisable picture). The film operates with the worst clichés you can find in a film - repetitive jokes, whose are not funny even the first time, very shallow dialogues, typical costume film eras - dark middle age, renaissance, Fitzgeraldoid jazz generation, Nazi occupation (with the mistake made by the filmmakers, as Hungary happened to be a Fascist country in the Second World War) and so on. As there is no plot, there is no real ending to the film either, just some shallow nationalism, saccharin sweet emotions, fireworks, 20th of August, The Hungarian Parliament surrounded by some terrible CGI, the list goes on. If you are interested in jokes chewed over few times by the crew to be understood by the "masses", one liners from the Hungarian film and TV "elite" and no laughter at all, then by all means watch this terrible sit-com. Otherwise steer clear from it. It says on the can, it's a historical comedy. It's not, it's a tragedy of the new Hungarian cinema. It's on pair with some other recent crap, especially Taxidermia. 0/10

But, this is my opinion. To tell a truth, this film strongly based on Hungarian history, and without deep studies in this, it can't be understandable. Thats why the story start at the beginning of the Hungarian era, have screen-shots with most important historical events and persons, and finished at nowadays Budapest. an average people even not known where Hungary lies, not who was e. g. King Mathias, and who plays him in the film. So if you didn't known anything about Hungarian history I recommended you, that don't watch this film. You will be boring, and then you will say, that this is a wrong film. It will be similar, that you would see the Monthy Python's Life Of Brien without known anything from, Jesus, Bible, Christmas, or Easter. Try to imagine.

Some of the critics says that this movie is the Hungarian version of the 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail', well... they've of course no right! This movie is one of the worst Hungarian movies I have ever seen, it's even worst than Valami Amerika (Something America). I really hate it, no good ideas, no good jokes and the directing is terrible. I cannot believe that the movie makers really wanted to sell this film for us. Forget this movie please, everybody! There are a lot of better comedys in Hungary, like Üvegtigris (Glass Tiger)... If you watch this movie, you'll spend a lots of time for nothing... like I said before.. please forget this awful movie! 0/10

The idea of the film is pretty good. Placing historical characters into anachronistic situations offer many opportunities of great jokes. Also the director's previous film was quite good, and he had a great chance to create a great job. Had the money and many big names in the cast.Supposed to be a comedy, but it's just a pathetic struggling. Stolen jokes from great films adopted terribly and horrible musical scenes. It was the first case in my life when I left the cinema at the half of the movie.It does not even worth the time it took to see, not to mention the cost of the ticket.