Elling

An enormous hit in its native Norway, this ingratiating comedy concerns the stumbling attempts of a couple of paroled loons to negotiate their rehabilitation into the big bad city (Oslo). Elling (Ellefsen) is an officious little mummy's boy with a niggling whine and a weird attachment to government and state; his pal Kjell (Nordin) a well-meaning slob more interested in food and women, though no more knowledgeable of the latter than his troglodyte friend. It's broad, parochial and in the end sentimental, but that's not to say the characters aren't sympathetic as you get to know them. (From a novel by Ingvar Ambjørnsen.