Call of the Cuckoo – More chaos than a Stockholm midsummer

Alright, so “Call of the Cuckoo” – we’re talking proper old-school slapstick here, like someone poured all the madness of a Swedish kräftskiva into a 20-minute film and called it Tuesday. Leo McCarey, you know, the bigwig director who also did that “Duck Soup” later, he’s at the helm. And front and center: the legendary Max Davidson, who’s basically your grumpy farbror stuck in a nightmare neighbourhood. Oh, and there’s Charley Chase plus a blink-and-miss cameo by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy before they became legends. Wild!

This whole mess kicks off with a house so wonky that my old sommarstuga in Småland looks sturdy in comparison. Walls sway, beds jiggle – the physical comedy is rapid fire, but I gotta admit, nearly gave me a headache like trying to follow an O’boy packet recipe in Finnish.

Watching it now, I couldn’t help thinking about my own gran’s flat in Södermalm back in ’87. The plumbing was so dodgy that every time someone flushed upstairs, it sounded like the horn section from a jazz band. We’d all just roll our eyes, laugh it off, and hope for the best. That’s what this film nails – somehow, chaos is comforting? Or at least hilarious, when it’s not your floorboards.

Is it perfect? Nah. Some jokes are dead even by ’27 standards and I def. lost count of the falling walls gag. But it’s a time capsule, like, you can almost smell the greasepaint through the screen (and maybe a little surströmming if you’ve got imagination). It’s fun, it’s loud, and honestly – perfect hangover viewing. Grab your polar, your snällaste tante, and enjoy the madness.

Don’t expect deep thoughts, just enjoy the lovely anarki.

watch the full movie on Mavshack Movies on YouTube

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