The impossible dilemmas related to money They have given great moments to the audiovisual world. What if you press a button and receive a million euros, but someone you don’t know dies because of you? What if you can earn a fortune in exchange for the rest of your teammates dying one by one? ‘The test’ never goes that far, but his idea can give a group of animated friends like the one in the film itself something to talk about for hours: What do you prefer: one hundred thousand euros now or one million in ten years? Sadly, once the idea is raised, the originality of the premise blows up the rest of the much more conventional footage.
I want a million to be happy
Dani de la Orden premieres not one, but two films this weekend: He is one of the most prolific directors of recent years, which in addition to movies is responsible for several episodes of ‘Elite’. Come on, who spends his life glued to a camera. The pity is that although his work as head of ‘The Test’ is commendable, making the most of the text adapted from the theaterthe truth is that towards the middle of the footage the tape is leaking without anyone being able to save it.
And it’s a shame, because its start is very powerful: a poor (but very conscientious) couple have been friends for years with a rich man who shows them his new house. During the course of the night, his morale is touched and he brings the dilemma in question (100,000 euros now or a million in ten years) to reality. Y now it is up to his colleagues to choose. The problem is that beyond the approach and the beginning of the dilemma, the film does not know how to take an extra step and gets too entangled, stretching the plot until a highly unsatisfying ending.
It is not only that the little skill in assembly makes twists can be seen coming light years away, but the relationship between the protagonists themselves is not understood. As much as Paula swears and perjures that Héctor is the love of her life, there is nothing that makes us sense it: no furtive glances, no private jokes, nothing more than reproaches and bad faces. It is not understood that the couple endure together, nor the staunch defense that she makes of him, ignoring everyone. Either scenes have been cut, or they have forgotten to make the couple destroy each other little by little (it’s not a spoiler, it’s the movie itself) Be credible first.
Between checks and psychologists
But this debacle is not the fault of the actors, who exploit their funny vein to the limit. In particular, Alberto San Juan once again demonstrates that he is a titan of comedy with his tone of voice sure but at the same time wobbly, and carries the entire film behind him. To a lesser extent, and as she has already accustomed us, there is not a moment of Antonio Resines that is not funny. But this is like saying that water is wet, of course.
‘The test’ tries to be at the same time a psychological analysis of two couples, a hilarious movie and a solution to a dilemma in which there are no good or bad answers. The problem is that the mixture of so many ideas does not result in a crazy comedy in which things never stop happening, but in which all the characters are obnoxious, they seem about to explode continuouslywith extreme reactions to mundane problems, and their reactions to each other are incongruous, with a script that is clear about the turning points in the plot but reaches them in a very unnatural way.
Special mention deserves Berta, the character played by Blanca Suárez, who appears in the middle of the film and, far from being funny or the voice of reason, is exasperating: from the first moment he is a character that the film can do without and simply adds a new removable plot to reinforce the already known personality of the protagonist. ‘The test’ does not stop insisting, over and over again, on the basic characteristics of the characters (he is very idealistic, he is a loser, he is rich, he is a workaholic psychologist) and, together with the repetition of the dilemma in Yes, ends up feeling like a hamster wheel in which not only do we not see the end, but we return again and again in an incomprehensible way to the beginning.
A failed test
Although the staging is convincing, a large part of the cast is more amused than ever and the initial idea is good, ‘The test’ fails to take flight at any time, becoming a perfect movie to watch after lunch but that does not add anything to its powerful premise. In fact, it ends up metamorphosing into a soap opera with comic overtones that breaks with the personality of his characters when it suits him until reaching a final scene that has no reason or reason to be.
Dani of the Order, who he has directed some very solvent works previously (‘Barcelona, winter night’, ‘Litus’) here he does not finish finding the formula that works, and in the end it is the equivalent of chewing gum that at first is an explosion of flavor but, an hour and a half later, It is a mazacote with a taste of nothing and very stretched out.
Not even the resolution of the famous question gives rise to an interesting debate within the film itself, which focuses more on than the solution to it. once again enhance personality stereotypes on which he continually insists. Ironically, ‘The test’ does not pass, but it shows that he has studied. a pity