Excellent, smart action film.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

You know from the start this will be great. Some movies take a bit to get going but you know early on this one is going to be wierd with some strange outcomes. Subtitles are easy to read.

I should start off by saying that I'm not a lover of quirky movies-- art-house or indy or weird. John Wick is my favourite film. Having said that, I loved this. The film is just funny. I watched an interview with the director and he claimed it played on an "English" sense of humour. I agree. Only the English get English humour, so I'm not sure everyone would find this as amusing as I did. The comedy is in an expression or a tiny throwaway line. In some crazy ways it reminds me of The World's End, the movie with Simon Pegg about a group of ageing men trying to regain their youth. In both movies you have the leads playing it totally straight, which only goes to emphasise the utter madness going on around them (in the Simon Pegg movie it's killer robots and in Men & Chicken it's...well, men with chickens, but you get my point). We start out with two slightly odd men (Mads's character Elias in particular) only to descend step by step, when they meet their other brothers, into total madness and chaos, which only gets funnier and funnier as your basis for judging madness slips and slips. I'm not sure which scene I liked more, the trip to the kindergarten to get rehired (I wouldn't hire these men as suicide bombers let alone to work with kids) or the one to pick up "girls" in an old people's home. This is one I'll watch again.

Anders Thomas Jensen has been known for spawning very creative stories, ones that are arguably designed for the absurd. Even if this is the case, there's an underlying genius to what he has created with 'Men and Chicken' (Mænd & høns). Whatever the idea might have been, it came together in the end perfectly.The story revolves around two brothers from Denmark who suffer from grotesque appearances and other mental issues that hinder them on a daily basis. While one brother, Gabriel, is a University professor who can't maintain a relationship, the other is the loose-cannon, Elias (phenomenally played by Mads Mikkelsen), who also has relationship issues and can't seem to go more than an hour without having to gratify himself.The brothers learn from their now deceased father that he was not their biological father, that the real one is a Geneticist who specializes in Stem Cell Research, fathered both men with different women, and that he resides on a remote island. While this excites Gabriel at first due to his assumptions that him and Elias could not be related, they embark on a journey that reveals their true family history. They find out that they have three other half-brothers who live on the remote island, and surprise surprise, they have similar features. While Elias is able to, say, communicate with the loners of the island in far less civilized methods, Gabriel attempts to help improve their ways of problem solving by talking and not by hilarious slapstick comedy beatings.It seems as if the story gets its inspiration from Kafka's 'The Metamorphisis'. So very "Kafka-esque" ('Mission Hill' reference). I'll let that idea sit with you. The film breaks the barriers of creativity in storytelling from both a comedic and dramatic perspective. It opens and closes as if reading a kids storybook, the musical score has a certain creepy feel to it, and the makeup and design all around was made to give the characters a worn down and dirty look that couldn't have possibly been any better.What was really fantastic about the film was despite the absurdity, the story really gelled into something of substance and quality. It told us that aren't able to choose our family, and that being different is the best thing in the world.The film ends on the note that every life -- be it creature or human, ugly or pretty, fat or skinny — is truly a small miracle. Things happen that are out of your control, and when you learn about what who you really are, it is possible to find comfort and acceptance. "For the very simple reason that life is life, and that the alternative is not preferable."

OK. Admittedly, I'm biased. I'm an enormous fan of Anders Thomas Jensen's movies and pretty much adore everything he's ever made or been even tangentially involved in, but up until now I was very firmly of the belief that 'Blinkende Lygter' was and would always remain my favourite of ATJ's movies. That was until I saw 'Mænd & Høns' and fell completely and traitorously in love.A perfect balance of black (oh god so so black) humour and pathos, this movie is a testament to ATJ's wonderfully deft touch with both. The characters, surreal and ridiculous as they are, are played with such humanity and conviction, that one cannot help but love them all, every last weird, disgusting one of them. As dual-lead, David Dencik is both loathsome and pathetically lovable as Gabriel. Nicolas Bro is a delight as always as the loquacious over-sharing Joseph, as is an almost unrecognisable Søren Malling as Franz. However, whereas it's normally Nicolaj Lie Haas that takes the comedic football and runs uncontested for the touchline, 'Mænd & Høns' is (definitely) Mads Mikkelsen's movie. As the compulsively masturbating, bombastic Elias, Mikkelsen reaps the lion's share of the comedic lines, delivering them with such incredible timing and bravado you can't help but think he missed his vocation when he opted for a career as leading-man heart-throb over bumbling idiotic funnyman.I can't say enough good about this film. Watch it as soon as a UK release is available. Talk about it until there is. Petition your local cinemas. Buy 'Mænd & høns' t-shirts and bore your friends. I know I will.