For the most part, we’ve left mainstream comedy films to the Yanks. Veering towards grandiose affairs of humourless slapstick, or a smartly written, well acted features, they rarely meet anywhere in the middle. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window and Disappeared is an example of a film doing just that.
On his one hundredth birthday, Allan climbs out of his window in a care home he reluctantly lives in. Intent on escaping to somewhere new and alone, he takes the bus to a small, almost non existent town, meeting people along the way. As the police start to track down his whereabouts, he leads a life of inadvertent crime, innately telling stories of his past on the way.
Although it lends a lot to the likes of Forrest Gump, The 100-Year-Old Man is simply a warm, well intended film to watch. It doesn’t try to involve needless backstories (apart from his past, obviously, which isn’t necessary but a beautiful anecdote that runs through it), but sets forward on this story that shows comedy holds no language.
It may stretch out a little, at nearly two hours long, but The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is a joyously comic film that has its heart in exactly the right place.
Editor of Frowning.us (SSJA 2014 Student Publication of the Year) & Film Writer for The Edinburgh Reporter
