The Drunk Collection: Another Round (2020)

A lot of the movies that have entered my universe usually do so at the crack ass of dawn after all the beer is gone. Before streaming tv was a thing, I'd clump down upon the couch, a frozen pizza burning in the oven, flipping through sixty or so channels and ending up on HBO or some sort of movie channel. It was that kind of night when I found Eddie & The Cruisers. I'd end up watching Eddie and his band on HBO forty-seven weeks in a row during 2008.
But, the streak died when one night, "Barfly," was aired in it's place. It's is the drunk Karate Kid, for me. I still watch it at least once a week, if i can function enough to find the remote.
And that, my friends is how I came up with The Drunk Collection. Okay, fine. It's just a rip off of The Criterion Collection. But, that's not the point of this video.
What if I told you there’s a movie where a bunch of high school teachers decide to turn their lives into one big happy hour experiment? Sounds like a fun little movie, right? I’m talking about "Another Round" a 2020 black comedy-drama that’s as fun as it is thought-provoking, and our first entry into the distinguished "The Drunk Collection," ... our version of the "Criteria Collection," only, you know ... movies with a more booze forward script. This film is a rollercoaster ride through the highs and lows of living life on the edge of sobriety.
Here's the crazy thing - the movie is spoken in Danish, fully. So if you don't speak Danish, you're watching with the subtitles on - Going into this movie, I did not realize that it wouldn't have an English version. SOOO, I decided to watch this Danish movie, about functioning drunks, FULLY FUCKING HAMMERED. So, in a way, this review is kind of like an "Inception," style review. Only .. not as good. (Incidentally, Leo DeCap is in works of remaking this for American audiences.)
In this Danish-Swedish-Dutch co-production, we’ve got four gents, led by Mads Mikkelson, playing four high school teachers who hatch a plan to keep themselves buzzed all day, every day. What could possibly go wrong, right? Their booze-fueled experiment starts off as a fun and liberating adventure but soon spirals into a hilarious, touching, and sometimes sobering look at the human condition.
The movie reminds me of Hemingway, who had rules about drinking - though he flip flopped on the rules at his own prerogative - but one of his rules at one point was to only drink during the day, while working (unless writing or fighting) and never drink past 8PM.
The four men find that the constant buzz creates a life they've never really experienced before; they are happy, feeling productive. So they do what all drunks do, they push the gas and increase the dose ... for science.
I think they did enough in the movie that it doesn't blatantly romanticize the abuse of alcohol, but shows the reality of a good time. Some of us don't know when the good times are over, until much later.