Beatles (Peter Flinth, 2014): Norway

Reviewed by Nadia Zetterberg. Viewed at the Metro 4 during the Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2015.

Four Norwegian teenage boys who are all best friends decide to start a band. They have The Beatles as their role models and want to attract girls the way the fab four did. The movie takes place in 1960’s Oslo, Norway and shows the four boys going through the many different phases of Junior High and being a teenager.  The main character Kim Karlsen struggles to find balance in his awkward teenage life. His number one role model is Paul McCartney and he wants to be exactly like him. He even mentions in the film that someone once told him he resembled McCartney. Kim wants to be cool and popular among the girls in school which makes him do things he normally would never do. The outstanding themes of this movie are friendship, love, life as a teenage boy and growing up. The movie has a lot of music in it that fits perfectly to its story. I absolutely loved this movie. It was a roller-coaster of emotions. It was funny, sentimental and very cute. It managed to bring out all kinds of emotions in me and even left a tear in my eye at one point. The movie perfectly depicts how life as a teenage boy can be and the struggles they go through. The depiction of life in 1960’s Oslo felt realistic to me and afterwards I wondered how they could make it feel so real even though the movie was shot in 2014. I will definitely watch this movie again and would recommend everyone I know to do so as well.