One Paragraph Movie Review: The Firemen’s Ball

One hundred and forty-sixth film: The Firemen’s Ball, or Hori Ma Panenko in its native Czech. Don’t you hate it when you sit through a movie set in a small town fireman’s ball with a four-pronged storyline about a retiring leader, a beauty pageant, a raffle and a burning farmhouse, not realising that the whole thing is an allegory with an anti-Soviet sub-plot? Because when that happens, you think you’re watching an at-best mildly interesting movie about a bumbling committee of firemen who like boobs but are inept at fighting theft and fires, instead of an at-best mildly interesting movie about the perils of communism, and I’m not sure which scenario would be more satisfying. I’m going with neither, because I reckon even though it’s billed as a comedy, sub-plot or not there’s no way to make a room full of downtrodden, miserable looking girls being ogled by a clutch of old men truly feel like fun. I will say one thing, though: it made me want to drink a beer from a big glass. Nup. One pilfered head cheese out of five.