Men & Chicken: A genre-bending mix of violent slapstick, sci-fi animal husbandry and macabre humour

Published May 20, 2016

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3.5 out of 4 stars

Title: Men & Chicken
Written by: Anders Thomas Jensen
Directed by: Anders Thomas Jensen
Starring: Mads Mikkelsen, David Dencik
Classification: 14A
Language: English
Year: 2016

For this pitch-black comedy, and his first feature in a decade, Oscar-winning Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen reassembles his absurdist troupe of usual suspects (including Mads Mikkelsen) as long-lost misfit siblings with an unorthodox paterfamilias.

A grubby abandoned sanatorium is their Frankenstein Castle where the performers play it convincingly straight within the gleefully outrageous (see: chickens) and genre-bending mix of violent slapstick, sci-fi animal husbandry and macabre humour (the highbrow, deadpan analysis in one Bible-study scene especially). It's a twisted existential grotesque that wrings thought-provoking pathos and even affection for the lunatics running the menagerie, no mean feat.

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