I Served the King of England

Director: Jiří Menzel
Year Released: 2006
Rating: 2.0

Diminutive Jan Díte dreams of being a millionaire but has his lowly beginnings in a pub - over the years leading up to World War II, he works in a variety of hotels, weds a Nazi Bitch and betrays his fellow Czechs. Díte's snow-white appearance and minimal amount of dialogue make him more of a mime than anything resembling a human being, so there doesn't seem to be much of a dramatic shift in him: he's merely a passive observer of Menzel's steady stream of carefully structured sight gags, running gags and a parade of gorgeous women (many of them being regularly naked). I respect the deliberate effort to keep overt political platitudes to a minimum (it's a picture that has issues with capitalism, fascism and communism), but supplanting that commentary with self-conscious quirkiness (Díte tossing coins to the floor just to see the rich crawl on the floor to pick them up) doesn't make it a more profound experience.