The heart on the palm will be a hit. The creators understand that the Czech viewer mainly wants to relax<

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It is amazing how little it takes for a domestic film to become a hit in Czech cinemas. First of all, it must have a comedic touch - which in the vast majority of cases does not indicate any particularly refined humor, more or less basic joking is enough. Furthermore, it is necessary to throw in a lineup of proven Czech acting faces into the recipe, which will stand out nicely on the posters. Apparently, Czech actors don't read scripts before accepting a role in a similar type of film, so even the most gruesome films manage to get relatively big names.

And then only one ingredient is enough - to decorate a massive advertising campaign with a magical slogan relating the given film to the hits of previous years. Are you asking if it matters how good the script, direction and other means of expression are? It isn't. It doesn't really matter what happens on the screen. There may not even be anything going on there at all. As in the case of the new Czech comedy Srdce na dlani.

However, I dare to say that this film will become a hit in Czech cinemas this year. For that, he needs the magic poster formula: "from the creators of the hit Women on the Run."

Women on the Run was the most watched Czech film of 2019. Just like Srdce na dlani, it was released in cinemas in January, its screenwriter and director was the self-taught Martin Horský, and the producer was Tomáš Hoffman. Former film editor Hoffman clearly has an eye for what Czech audiences want. His Viewegh adaptation, directed by Filip Renč, Roman for Women, became the most successful film of 2005, and a year later he scored in the cinemas with another Viewegh - Tour Participants (Hoffman was a co-producer with Rudolf Biermann for both films). The tour participants were already directed by Jiří Vejdělek, who under Hoffman's production management became the king of Czech cinemas in 2010 with Women in Temptation and two years later with Men in Hope.

In 2019, Hoffman brought the aforementioned Women on the Run to cinemas, which at the time surpassed even Hollywood blockbusters and became the third most visited film in Czech cinemas in modern history, when it was seen by 1.5 million viewers and grossed 211 million crowns sales. Women in the Run was Horský's directorial debut, he had previously written the scripts for three comedies of a similar nature.

It is no wonder that the expectations surrounding Heart on the Palm are huge. And it is all the more surprising how amateurishly made the film is. It's as if the creators don't really care what the movie will be, because they have the audience's attention guaranteed anyway, especially with a giant campaign with that magic formula. Horský already spoke at Žen v beh about the fact that it should be a film that will make people happy, he made the same statement on the occasion of the release of Srdce na dlani. In an interview for Reflex three years ago, he confessed his admiration for films based on the scripts of Zdenek Svěrák. "They don't lose their charm even after years, even though we all know how they will turn out. That's actually my goal: to make films that people will feel good about and will be happy to return to and look forward to," he said at the time.

In all interviews, he repeatedly says that his films are supposed to make people happy, as if he assumes that the very feeling of well-being will ensure a great movie experience. But what makes a good film, perhaps surprisingly for some filmmakers, is a good script and good direction. Zdenek Svěrak's films are still unsurpassed cornerstones of domestic entertainment cinema, mainly because they have a strong story. And on this field, Heart in the Palm fails across the board.

Srdce na dlani starts quite strongly with a scene in which the main character Anička (Jana Pidrmanová) catches her husband in bed with another man together with her five-year-old son. It's supposed to be a funny scene, but thanks to the presence of a child, it has a disturbing effect. The characters pass this family drama more or less without any comments, they continue to smile at each other fondly, and the scene has only one purpose - to bring Anička into the household of her father Josef (Bolek Polívka). The line-up of heroes also includes the cafe owner Maruška (Eliška Balzerová), Honzík's teacher Eliška (Kristina Svarinská), who falls into the lap of the handicapped Karel (Vladimír Polívka), and Josef's neighbor Pavel (Matouš Ruml), who circles around Anička.

Thus, the film brings a group of characters to the screen quite unceremoniously, which it already predestined to be paired with other characters in the very introduction. Those couples then circle around each other for the rest of the one and a half hour footage, until they finally rest in each other's arms. At the same time, they do not overcome any obstacles, or only minimal obstacles that can be overcome relatively easily.

There are no antagonists who would significantly disrupt their plans, if we do not count the little boy with whom the five-year-old Honzík fights in kindergarten for the new little girl Evička. However, this opponent is easily handled by the fact that Honzík has a nicer T-shirt, so he conquers Anička more or less without difficulty. In a similar style, problems are solved in other storylines as well. And it almost always goes with a smile. Because the main purpose of a movie is to make you happy.

Srdce na dlani is, among other things, part of the wave of dog comedies that has swept Czech film recently. After a couple of dachshunds from Tada, we look after the subversive Gump from the no less cheesy piece Gump: The Dog Who Taught People to Live Here we have a couple of lethargically staring basset hounds, whose love line is as essential a plot line of this film as human lines. The dogs probably help the viewer feel relaxed and calm, after all everyone loves dumb faces, let's add them to the cake, the viewer will be moved and excited, almost as much as children and pensioners.

In the name of invoked well-being and joy, everyone is constantly smiling at each other. It then seems rather strange when Honzík's mother Anička rejects her childhood love with a heartfelt smile and does so throughout the film, until she suddenly realizes that there is no love waiting for her anywhere else and they fall into each other's arms. And so on. In order to satisfy all audience groups, children, adults, dogs and pensioners find their counterparts here. Probably because children and dogs and pensioners are cute and touching - even if the cuteness of the silly character of the five-year-old Honzík, who constantly asks annoying, naively would-be funny questions, can be successfully doubted.

Thanks to the almost continuous, after a while inevitably killing music component, the film drags on a bit more slowly than the lengthy plot itself, in which only the viewer waits when the creators finally pair up all the characters and have fun just imagining it , which could disrupt their plans. But nothing happens in this film that would disturb the well-being, i.e. nothing surprising, or even disturbing, or, God forbid, dramatic. The Czech viewer, from the point of view of the creators of these films, is someone who above all wants to have his peace, to doze peacefully while watching the film, and if something wakes him up, he will definitely get his bearings in the plot quickly enough to be able to fall asleep peacefully again.

The work of destruction is completed by the complete absence of emotions - although Heart in the Palm is probably supposed to be a film about love, any emotion is replaced by gentle smiles. The development of situations or plots, usual in ordinary films, does not occur, the film just continues to cruise through sunlit parks and streets without anything significant happening.

The entire film takes place in the present day, bathed in that filter of sun-drenched timelessness, in the center of Prague, where instead of tourists, mothers with appropriately cute children are looking at cats' heads, or smiling pensioners are passing by on bicycles.

At least the headline run, the preparation of the female family clan for the marathon, gave the women running a boost. In Srdec na dlani, this unifying framework is missing, and the characters are rather just plodding through the film and randomly meeting other characters, dogs, children and pensioners, and smiling at each other. And that's how the audience smiles (except for the snarky reviewers) and leaves the cinema to spread their smiles to the rest of the country.

Before the mentioned vicious reviewer is accused of hatred for Czech comedies, it is appropriate to recall the films that in recent years have grasped the comedy genre in an original way, with nobility and without shallowness, such as Srdce na dlani and similar films. One of the best films of recent years is Jiří Havelka's Owners, who in 2019 boldly followed up on the aforementioned Svěrák-Smoljak legacy with the story of a group of residents of one house who gather at a meeting of apartment owners. Already at the beginning of February, the highly anticipated new comedy by the same creator, An extraordinary event, in which Jana Plodková, Igor Chmela and Jenovéfa Boková get stuck in a motorbike hurtling down the tracks. In June, Men's Club, based on the successful play about the therapeutic sessions of erotomaniacs, is heading to the cinemas, as well as Adam Koloman Rybanský's debut film If It Would Rather Burn, which will premiere at February's prestigious Berlinale festival and which relates to the heritage of the Czech New Wave in the story of volunteer firefighters from of a Czech municipality.

Apparently, even in Czech meadows and groves, you can come across comedy films that are worth seeing. Unfortunately, the heart on the palm does not belong to them. Although it is a movie that seems made to become a mass hit.

Update: we corrected Kristina Svarinská's name.