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'Another Round' (12A)



Director: Thomas Vinterberg

Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millgang, Lars Ranthe

Where can I watch?: Another Round is in cinemas now 

Rating: 2/5

Review: Applauded on the awards and festival circuit since 2020, it's fair to say that Thomas Vinterberg's Another Round was universally 'hyped up' long before its eventual release in UK cinemas. Billed as a 'comedy', critics couldn't praise Vinterberg's (who also co-wrote the film) tale of four middle-aged school teachers engaging in an experiment with alcohol enough. It appears that I must have been watching the wrong film, then, as I can't recall laughing at this so-called 'comedy' a single time, nor can I say that I particularly enjoyed it. For me, the real issue comes from the lack of clarity around the film's central message: what is Vinterberg trying to say about alcohol? Veering from tragic scenes of home lives falling apart, suicide and even a grown man wetting his own bed to moments in which one of the teachers encourages a pupil to drink ahead of a spoken exam for confidence (presumably sparking a life-long alcohol dependency...), the film lacks any defining answer - is alcohol good or bad? Of course, the answer is complex and ambiguous, depending on personality, situation and volume consumed, amongst many other factors, but Vinterberg's inability to neither condemn or condone drinking is hugely frustrating. Maybe it would be better to view the film as not one about alcohol but as a portrayal of middle-aged masculinity and the loss of youth; after all, each of the main characters are teachers in a high school, packed with energetic juveniles on the cusp of adulthood and all the possibilities that entails. Much has been written about the concluding sequence in which the teachers dance among the graduating students as they shower each other with champagne, but for me it left something of a bitter taste - following hot on the heels of a tragedy presumably brought on by the alcohol experiment, this sequence seemed to be, again, a jollification of the situation and a rather baffling conclusion to an uneven film. 

A Must-Watch?: Not even an excellent cast (or Mads Mikkelsen's beautiful face) can save Another Round from being an incredibly frustrating watch. Uneven and largely depressing, this supposed 'comedy' is as far from a laugh-out-loud watch as it is possible to get, but the main issue for me is the lack of any sound and meaningful resolution surrounding the effect of alcohol - disappointing. 

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