Men and Chicken

There's warmth and heart beneath the grotesque exterior.

It's a twisted existential grotesque that wrings thought-provoking pathos and even affection for the lunatics running the menagerie, no mean feat.

Occasionally rib tickling but more often gut churning, this turns largely on the spectacle of Mikkelsen, a respected dramatic actor and a Bond villain no less, being cast as a furiously dyspeptic nerd who keeps running off somewhere to masturbate.

While this isn't the best movie you'll ever see, for the curious it's worth exploring.

You can't accuse "Men & Chicken" of false advertising: There are men and there are chickens.

Jensen positions "Men & Chicken" as a fablelike ode to humanism and tolerance, but his obsession with brutish sexuality and mean, slapstick humor makes that claim feel unearned and glib.

Slapstick, scatological, juvenile, and crass. I loved it.

A sci-fi-esque premise Kafka would be proud of... silly, slapstick, empathetic and amusing.

Anders Thomas Jensen is one of Denmark's most fêted film-makers, the winner of two Oscars and a man with a knack for twisted comedies.

Men & Chicken is strange and often dark, but it's weirdly sweet, too, not to mention very funny. If you like The League Of Gentlemen then you're going to want to catch this.

Like the mansion where most of the action unfolds, writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen's fourth feature brims with mutant creatures, bestial desires and warped family feelings.