dir. Gabor Csupo, USA, Hungary, 2008, 78'
The work of Gabor Csupo, the animator of the now almost stale series The Simpsons, presents his first feature-length animated film targeted at adult
audiences. The film reflects the environment of an illegal immigrant community seeking their fortune in the land of unlimited possibilities.
This quest for the American dream is one long halting journey as shown by the two main characters – the Hungarian womanizer Joska (from the Hungarian title Jóska menni Amerika – the sweet life in America) and his best friend Vladislav, a true Russian in body and soul. Together with Vladislav's daughter Anya and other caricatured characters from the neighbourhood they rush frantically to work, success and women while trying to find the easiest way to meet their ideals of life. Csupo offers us a crazy pilgrimage full of comic situations and trenchant humour (not vainly reminiscent of the early troubles of the worldfamous "yellow family"). The film is replete with references to pop-culture, gentle moralizing and the adherence to fundamental values of social and sexual life. In its discourse, the picture does not withhold from some amount of vulgarity and eroticism but, without any redundant explicitness, it avoids balancing on the edge of common taste.
Jan Gál
