Stale Danish

I was disappointed in two touted 2012 releases, new on video, that just failed to grab me.

KEEP THE LIGHTS ON (C+) - I have little or no tolerance for relationship movies involving one member of the couple coping with a drug addict or drunk as a mate. I don't think a good one's been made since the '50s. In this one, Erik is stuck with Paul, who keeps going on benders and disappearing for days or weeks at a time. The whole exercise is hampered from the start by the lack of za-zah emanating from these two bland blond boys. Thure Lindhardt (a Dane whose foreign-language scenes are a distraction) does manage to convey a few moments of grace in his thankless role as Erik, a documentary filmmaker. Zachary Booth ("Damages") is pretty much a cipher here. Throw in Erik's even less interesting single gal pal Claire (Julianne Nicholson) and her cliched fixation on having a baby someday, and it's a struggle to find a way into this story. The sex is fairly raunchy but not explicit. Gay or straight, a love story like this may be deeply personal and autobiographical for writer/director Ira Sachs, but it just annoyed me.

KLOWN (B-minus) - From Denmark, this raunchy comedy pushes boundaries (sexual fetishes, de facto child abuse) and has its moments, but it plays like one long inside joke by two comedians (nerdy Frank Hvam and dashing Casper Christensen) that probably has 'em just cracking up in Copenhagen. It reminded me of an extended episode of "Fawlty Towers," except not nearly as hysterical but rather a lot more mean. In fact, there's a '70s weariness to the whole exercise. Here, Frank wants to convince his pregnant girlfriend that he can be a good father, so he basically kidnaps her 12-year-old nephew and takes him along with Casper for a canoe trip/sex holiday. Ho-ho! The low point has the men sneaking into the boy's tent at night to take snapshots of the poor kid's tiny penis (the source of mockery from the other kids) -- all, it turns out, for the sake of a flimsy plot device that enables a weak, wacky ending. Or is the low point the sex act Frank performs over the sleeping body that he thinks is his wife, except it turns out to be her mother, an inexplicable mistake considering one is blond and the other brunette and his target is her face. But anything to facilitate the sight gag a few reels later of the mother wearing an eyepatch. (Don't ask. In essence, the female characters are either shrews or prostitutes.) Overall, it's kind of subversively fun ... until it isn't, and you feel dirtier than the woman who kindly takes the trio in after a capsizing and is thanked that night with a not-entirely-consensual threesome.