The Red Chapel

13th Annual Wisconsin Film Festival 2011

You’ve heard that the best jokes write themselves? The Red Chapel movie is about a couple of Danish comedians who offer their act to North Korea to take a satiric jab at the government’s idea of cultural exchange. Over the course of the movie, which showcases sightseeing trips to monuments and schools, their act has to be screened by a panel of government drones who virtually rewrite and re-direct everything they do until the only thing remaining is their costumes and a song. Everything the North Koreans do is a wicked caricature of paranoid group hive mentality. In the words of one of the comedians, “It’s psycho creepy&#148 and bizarrely enlightening.

Four out of Five.

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