The Great Day on the Beach/Den Store Badedag (1991) or, My Copenhagen Boyhood

♥♥♥♥♥

The warm and pleasant poster for Stellan Olsson's The Great Day on the Beach with the tag-line that translates to; 'If the rays of the sun were as dangerous as my dad claimed - then we lived in safety...!'

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Gustav Adolf lives in a little apartment in Copenhagen with his Swedish mother and proud, heroic, omniscient father. Who changes his mind one day and takes the residents of the building along for a day at the beach. - And who might not be so infallible after all...

The Great Day on the Beach, (the original Danish title translates best to 'the great bathing day'), is a wonderful, warm coming-of-age film about the painful discovery for a boy of seeing for the first time who his idealized father really is. The story is told with eminent eye for the boy's perception of reality and with grand humor and performances from Erik Clausen (People Get Eaten/Mennesker Bliver Spist (2015)) as the father, Nina Gunke (The Bomber/Sprängaren (2001)) as the mother and Benjamin Rothenborg Vibe (The Two Penny Dance/Klinkevals (1999)) as Gustav Adolf.
This is a very Danish production, (although strictly speaking a Danish-Swedish co-production) which also has a lovely narrator in Jesper Klein (The Boy Who Wanted to Do the Impossible/Drengen Der Ville Gøre Det Umulige (2002)).
Great Swedish writer/director Stellan Olsson (Fleas Bark Too, Don't They?/En Loppe Kan Også Gø (1996)) wrote the screenplay with Søren Skjær (Fish Out of Water/De Frigjorte (1993)), based on the same-titled 1982 novel by Palle Fischer (Gøglerens Sidste Bolde (1976)).
The Great Day on the Beach is a memorable, great film.

Some stills from Stellan Olsson's The Great Day on the Beach from the back of the DVD cover

In lieu of a trailer, which isn't currently on Youtube, here are the cabbage scenes from the film, (regrettably without subtitles)

Cost: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown
[The Great Day on the Beach was released September 27 and runs 100 minutes. It won awards at three film festivals, and 228,078 paid admission to see it in Denmark and 5,181 in Sweden. Without knowing the budget, it is impossible to say whether this makes the film a theatrical success, although it was likely a flop, maybe just a minor flop. The Great Day on the Beach was reportedly well-reviewed in Denmark and Sweden, and 454 users have given it an average rating of 6.8 on IMDb.]

What do you think of The Great Day on the Beach?