Barefoot

The film didn't disappoint me outright, but I had hoped it would be even funnier, with more humor from Zdeněk Svěrák, but it's a bit weaker in that regard. As a nostalgic film, it works, especially thanks to the great child characters. The storyline revolving around the character of Vlk (Oldřich Kaiser) had much more potential within it. (20/08/2017)

If you are a fan of Svěrák, you’ll survive Barefoot unscathed and even with a pleasant smile. It’s a cute, poetic view of the world through the eyes of a child that is too cute and too loosely poetic – the story lacks a core conflict that would help give shape to the characters and the pleasant episodes of life are supported by several sub-plots, but lack a solid frame and give the impression that they could last another hour. Other than Eda, the character with the most interesting story is Kaiser’s Wolf, the rest have a more or less subordinate position and guide the protagonist through a world driven mainly by family values and the beauty and pitfalls of boyhood, with the war taking a secondary role. It’s not a bad film, it has solid direction and several nicely delivered humour motifs, but the result is too shoddy and inconsistent. 65% (04/01/2019)

I find it hard to review this... I love the book and audiobook very much, it has the beautiful atmosphere of childhood memories, it's warm, and the little guy's view of big things in it is magical. Zdeněk Svěrák the writer was able to write it, Zdeněk Svěrák the actor can also tell the story... But while Jan Svěrák the director was able to film it, Jan Svěrák the screenwriter unfortunately couldn't tell it as well as his father. Hard to say if it was even possible... But some scenes should have been longer or should not have been there at all, some situations in turn definitely should have been shown to viewers so that they and Eda would not learn them only secondhand (we should have seen at least the “grandmother who was coming toward them" or “Péťa who flew off") and then it would have been more pleasant, more coherent. And I didn't understand the purpose of one change from the book, where the mom and Eda meet someone else at the pond. But just so I don’t complain so much, I must commend the actors (Ondřej Vetchý is particularly accurate, Tereza Voříšková, with a few exceptions, feels very natural, Oldřich Kaiser is a certainty, and Jan Tříska as well), the music by Michal Novinski, the believable period atmosphere, the nicely captured countryside and plot of reviving scenes of Eda's imaginations. Three and a half. (18/08/2017)

It has some magical moments that prove that Svěrák Jr. is a really good director. I appreciate the view of the war through children's eyes, but the story is too disjointed; it needed a unifying line. The story of Uncle Wolf, which was supposed to cement the narrative, isn't enough to pull the whole film together. It's a shame, I really wanted to love this film. (01/01/2019)

The already abbreviated original looks more like an initial hint and outline for a much more extensive material, but it is saved by Sverak's language mastery and wrapped in a precisely matched captivating mix of a boy's mostly summer adventure full of smiling, every day and dramatic moments from growing up in the countryside during the occupation. It´s just a more dramatic variation on There Were Five of Us or Les récrés du petit Nicolas. Although the adaptation largely slavishly and with no context illustrates the scenes from the short story, but what is missing is a safety net made of kind humor and playful Czech language. In addition, there is no dramatic framework and, what is most reprehensible, is that a life vest in the form of a distinctive children's point of view through the adventures of “us, boys, who go out together and experience all kinds of adventures" is completely missing. The result is a nice and incoherent patchwork of better and worse fragments of scenes that is captured in a “watchable" way, nothing more and nothing less. (01/01/2019)