Another Round Feels Like A Glass Half Empty

Stop me if you've heart this premise before... A group of middle-aged friends are having a mid-life crisis and form a pact to drink alcohol in an attempt to prove a theory that the human body is naturally .5% low in their blood alcohol level.  Naturally, hilarity initially ensues before things get more serious and the men figure their lives out.  Sounds like any number of Will Ferrell or Seth Rogan/James Franco movies, right?  Well, Another Round isn't nearly as silly or as formulaic as those movies, but it's essentially Old School in a nutshell.  However, I felt like the Best Foreign Film Oscar winner should have been so much more.  It was well-acted and well-directed (it even earned a shocking Best Director Oscar nomination), but I couldn't help wishing there was more to it.

Mads Mikkelsen (in a refreshingly non-villainous role) plays a high school history teacher who's essentially going through the motions, both in his job and in his marriage.  He is failing so badly in his job that his students and their parents stage an intervention with him in order for him to challenge his students better.  Fast forward a couple days to his friend and co-worker's 40th birthday party, where they discuss an out-of-left field scientific theory that the human body is born with a natural blood alcohol level shortfall.  That, by maintaining a BAC level at .05%, they will be able to tap into their potential and become higher functioning adults.  Mikkelsen and group of teacher/friends decide to test this theory.  They set a series of ground rules for this experiment and head out on their merry (inebriated) way.  At first, things look positive.  They all seem to be improving both in their lives and in their jobs.  Mikkelsen, in particular, is connecting with his students like never before.  However, like all things alcohol related, the boys decide to push things too far.
 

At this point, the boys decide to take their alcohol consumption to the point where they're all functioning alcoholics.  This is the point where the movie falls apart for me, and where it could have used a little more nuance.  It's established that each character is failing in their own way, but there's no motivation behind them pushing the limits of this drinking theory.  I guess each had to really bottom out before they realized that they all had it pretty good after all, or that drinking isn't the solution to fixing their shortcomings.  I feel like the third act went by too fast without fully exploring each character... especially Mikkelsen's.  The end of the film is purposely open-ended and doesn't take a firm enough stand.  Maybe we're meant to believe that he's starting over once again, and finding himself is more important than fixing his fractured family.  I don't know.  Maybe I need "Another Round" (thank you!  I'll be here all week.  Try the veal!) with this film to fully enjoy it.  I just don't think I have it in me.

There have been rumors that Leonardo DiCaprio will be headlining an American version of this film.  While DiCaprio always knocks it out of the park in whatever movie he's in, I just don't see a need for it.  Maybe I'll be proved wrong.  

Another Round is streaming on Hulu if you want to check it out.