IT'S ONLY MAKE BELIEVE (Eventyrland) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The Joys of Liberal Norway Just 4 U

Come to lovely Norway We have lovely fjords And you will NOT be Raped Anally unless you want to be!!!

The first thing our eyes are drawn to in the opening shot of the lightweight Norwegian crime thriller It's Only Make Believe (Eventyrland) is a pair of horking, mean-ass stainless steel clippers which we immediately hope will be used to snip off someone's appendage(s) and/or get slammed repeatedly over a skull. No such luck. A Babe (Silje Solomonsen) and her boyfriend (Fredrik Hana), the holder of the aforementioned clippers, are patiently waiting for an accomplice to show up before they pull a supposedly simple job. This is Norway, you see.

While we wait for the third wheel to appear, our attractive Norwegian leads rest calmly in the dark and talk about how much they love each other since the babe reveals she's preggers with her beau's seed. Seems the lad's Norwegian Wood yielded just the right pay dirt during one of their copulatory trysts. After some soulful yapping, their accomplice doesn't make an appearance, so the babe and her true love wander over to a humungous greenhouse and - SNIP - the cutters open a chain and they wander in.

Finding a whole whack of drugs and a shotgun, they're ready to blow the popcorn stand, but as these things go, someone unexpected shows up. After a mad dash, the babe starts to pump out lead from the shotgun and sooner than you can say Kris Kringle (that's Norwegian, right?), the intruder is lying dead and hubby-to-be is wounded. The result of these shenanigans is that beau-boy survives, but must live the rest of his life as a vegetable in an institution. Happily, as this is Norway, the babe pops the vegetable's progeny and spends ten years in prison.

As it's a Norwegian prison, it pretty much looks like a country club and we never get a single instance of some Linda Blair Born Innocent action with our Norwegian Babe being held down nude on a tile floor whilst being raped with a broom handle. In fact, Norwegian prisons look so humane that instead of, say, John Vernon as the warden pulling some Chained Heat hot tub rape action on our Babe (much like Vernon did to Linda Blair in that immortal 1983 chick-in-prison picture), she saunters out on release day with a friendly and oh-so-genial fatherly hug from a prison official.

Isn't Norway grand?

It's grander than you think, let me tell you. The babe's daughter has been raised by an affluent foster mother and for the little murderess's entire prison term (uh, only ten years for killing one guy and turning another into a vegetable), she's actually been allowed day-trip visits with the kid. Man, those Norwegian hoosegows are really progressive. And now our Babe, who merely popped the little bugger in a nice, clean Norwegian prison hospital, wants to take her spawn from the woman who's been its real mother.

Fat chance. Norway might be liberal, but it's not completely run by bleeding heart retardates. The babe can only get custody of the kid again if she can prove that the pretty little babe-ette daughter (Iben Østin Hjelle) will be better off than she is now. This is going to be quite a challenge since the babe's apartment needs new plumbing and she can't afford it. She pays a visit to the scumbag accomplice (Vegar Hoel) who never showed up that fateful night and he agrees to pay for plumbing. He even helps her steal some paint so she can doll the place up with a few fresh coats and brightly coloured drawings of ponies and other nice girly things.

Isn't Norway a wonderful place?

Well, it's not all peaches and cream in the Land of Liberal Fjords. It seems the brother (Ole Romsdal) - at least I think he's the brother - of the man she killed, is one mean mo-fo who wants to make her pay dearly. With his grotesquely psychotic henchman, who goes by the name of - HAH! - Eddie Vedder (Egil Birkeland), our Babe is going to be in a real Norwegian pickle barrel. She has to do all manner of drug deals to pay off her "debt" and if she refuses, her little girl will be used as the bait to make sure she complies.

She's just got to get out of this sticky wicket somehow, but if you have any doubts that she will, allow me to remind you that this entire ludicrous, precious, but compulsively watchable movie is set in - you guessed it - NORWAY!!! Seriously, it's a great place to raise a family. Just like our babe-o-licious murderess, you can romp around with the daughter you've never really known while lame, on-point Norwegian Eddie-Vedder-wannabe songs play on the soundtrack. In Norway, it's like life stops every so often and turns into a music video.

You know, I can't stress Norway's magnificence enough. Norway, you see, is truly the Land of Make Believe! How make believe is it, you ask? Norway is so make believe that when the bad guy holds down the babe face flat in the dirts, pulls her pants down and orders Eddie Vedder to rape her in the ass, Eddie refuses to do so.

I don't know about you, but I'm booking a one-way ticket to Norway next week. Who wouldn't want to use a bit of that magical Norwegian Wood on Norwegian Babes and be able to refuse orders to forcibly sodomize them in a land of milk, honey and, uh, fjords.

It's Only Make Believe (Eventyrland) opens theatrically at the Carlton Cinemas in Toronto via Vagrant Films. Alas, there are no promotional tie-ins with the Norwegian Tourist Bureau.