Saippuaprinssi (2006)

Director:

Janne Kuusi

Writer:

Aleksi Bardy (writer)

Release Date:

10 February 2006 (Finland)

Genre:

Comedy | Romance

Plot:

A soap opera screenwriter writes a romance for herself and the star of the show. |

Plot Keywords:

Soap Opera | Television Within Film | Amnesia | Television Writer | Older Woman Younger Man Relationship

Awards:

4 nominations

Cast

Pamela Tola	...	Ilona Varis
Mikko Leppilampi	...	Kalle Berg / Antero
Outi Mäenpää	...	Raakel
Teijo Eloranta	...	Kuvanauhoittaja
Kristiina Halttu	...	Reija / Seija (as Kristina Halttu)
Sari Havas	...	Dialogikirjoittaja
Jarmo Hyttinen	...	Enkeli (as Jami Hyttinen)
Julia Jokinen	...	Kuvaussihteeri
Risto Kaskilahti	...	Miksaaja
Tommi Korpela	...	Apulaisohjaaja
Anu Koskinen	...	Reseptionisti
Pete Lattu	...	Leo
Melli Maikkula	...	Burnout-kirjoittaja
Minttu Mustakallio	...	Eeva
Anna Paavilainen	...	Jonna

Also Known As:

Såpakungen (Finland: Swedish title)
Soap (International: English title)

Runtime:

97 min

Country:

Finland

Language:

Finnish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Certification:

Finland:K-7 | Argentina:13

Filming Locations:

Helsinki, Finland

Company:

Finnish Film Foundation

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Huuma: (#2.18)" (2006)

Soundtrack:

Hot Gossip

Funny movie with good actors

I won the tickets from a competition and when I went to the cinema, I was quite suspicious. I mean, the plot sounded just too cliché and ordinary comedy story and the main actors (Mikko Leppilampi and Pamela Tola) are still pretty unexperienced as actors. Still, there was some hope left that this could really be something fine entertainment, and it really was.

The film is full of talented side actors, for example Outi Mäenpää (as Raakel), Sari Havas (as a disturbed writer), Risto Kaskilahti (as an angry mixer) and Juha Veijonen (as an actor who fell in love with Ilona). I think all the actors succeeded very well, especially Mäenpää, but maybe the most surprising role in the whole film was Jukka Puotila's act as a taxi driver: I haven't seen Puotila in any role for a while and he made perhaps the funniest scene in the whole movie. It was also a great idea to bring real television drama actors like Pete Lattu and Venla Saartamo, which both were acting in Salatut elämät TV series, to play a role to this kind of movie. I was very surprised when I noticed that some real musician like Zarkus Poussa had got a role to play a funny sound effect man with imaginary ways to create any sound.

The idea of making a soap opera in a movie worked well. The overacted emotions and the nonsense lines made me laugh time after time during the film so that I had sometimes troubles to follow the plot itself. The movie isn't clever, but so what! It doesn't even try to be anything like that. And that's why the whole idea works very well. I have to thank also Aleksi Bardy for making the movie better than it would have been without him: Bardy has written besides this movie some drama series for instance Käenpesä, and this is another reason why the idea of this movie works so well.

In spite of all this, Saippuaprinssi isn't a perfect film. As the director said before the beginning of the movie in the cinema, the comedy is a hard sort of art. It's much harder to make a good comedy film than a good "wannabe clever mystery" film, I suppose. Anyway, this is a Finnish comedy movie I've been waiting for long time, and I really enjoyed it.