#55 Keloglan vs The Black Prince (Wes)

Keloglan vs. the Black Prince

This list occasionally throws up movies that I never thought I’d end up watching, not down to simple things like it “stars” Mariah Carey, or it was “directed” by Uwe Boll, but more due to the fact that it’s of a genre I’ve never even thought about searching for, and this time it was a Turkish comedy film Keloğlan Kara Prense Karşı. Now even though the Turkish word for against was strikingly similar to the British slang word for toilet, khazi, a bad omen for sure, we had to step in unknown territory and take our chances.

Keloglan (Mehmet Ali Erbil) has long Goldilocks-like hair (and a different name, but I didn’t quite catch that) and wants to marry the sultans daughter, Can Kiz (Petek Dincoz). When she is threatened by a dragon, Keloglan and The Black Prince, Kara Prens (Ozcan Deniz) argue about who should save her. Eventually the prince knocks himself out, leaving to Keloglan cut the dragons head off, but he doesn’t realise that this dragon has two heads, the other of which promptly burns all his hair off. A year later Keloglan is still trying to marry Can Kiz, but she doesn’t want to go through with this marriage so her father, the Sultan (Aysen Gruda) keeps setting him tasks to do before he can marry her. His latest task is for Keloglan to get the belt of a vicious giant. So instead of going to a store that caters to the tall or portly gentleman, and just buying a belt, Keloglan sets off with his friend Cankusoglan (Bulent Polat) on this latest adventure, whilst The Black Prince attempts to stop him. Keloglan is soon joined by Bal Kiz (Ahu Turkpence), a woman who is in love with him, but who is disguised as a boy (or possibly just a simple slug balancer), as they encounter various fairytale characters and try to complete this latest mission to win the princesses heart.

  

With the inclusion of all the various fairytale characters, including a dancing Robin Hood (see the pic above. I think I may be using that as an insult on peoples Facebook statuses from now on) and the Evil Queen from Snow White (who is The Black Prince’s sister in this movie), who uses her magic mirror to find those prettier than her so she can wipe them out, this movie reminded me a lot of a live-action Shrek. However Shrek was a brilliant parody of the numerous fairytales, and this movie really didn’t quite manage this for me. I think the reason Kelogan failed as a comedy for me falls into three distinct reasons, so I feel that I should address them separately.

1) Lost in Translation

Keloglan means bald boy in Turkish, and is a famous character in Turkish literature. This of course explains why all the other characters from fairy stories/folklore are in the movie, but it doesn’t really help the viewer who has no idea of either Turkish stories, or the Turkish language. Now I can’t fault the filmmakers for that. They weren’t setting out to please some random guy from Essex who knows nothing of their culture, so I only really mention this as part of why any of the more subtle humour may have passed over my head.

This is nothing to do with the movie, but I thought I’d tell you about this as it’s fairytale related and it does illustrate to the point I’m making: The fairytale Little Red Riding Hood suffered from this problem. Whilst the story is easy to follow no matter what language it’s translated into, it did lose its humour when it was translated from the French. When Red is remarking about the size of the wolf’s various body parts, she says what large legs the wolf has. The wolf replies “All the better to run with, my dear”. To run was/is French slang to have sex with. Hardly the most high-brow humour, but at least it keeps the adults amused when reading to the kids.

2) I rarely find comedy from outside the UK or USA/Canada funny

Again, I’m not sure if this is a problem of mine, and a somewhat narrow view on the world, but I just don’t get international humour. I think it may have something to do with the language barrier again, and the fact that I probably only pick up on fart gags and slapstick, and miss out on the subtle wordplay and wit that is probably there in a lot of comedies. Somehow I doubt this film was up to the level of Oscar Wilde style sophisticated wit though. Apart from the Shrek comparison that I’ve already made, it’s very much like the terrible movies that have become tried to follow the Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker movies. Admittedly, I found this movie funnier than Meet the Spartans (see my review here), which we watched a while back, and indeed probably most of the so called comedy movies we’ve seen on this list so far. But really this is just another of those movies that relies too strongly on tired slapstick and unfunny parodies (not as much as its American counterparts, but it does do a few, eg The Ring).

Or perhaps it’s more to do with the few foreign language comedy movies I’ve seen. With the exception of Amelie, Good Bye Lenin and various kung-fu movies, I can’t think of any international movies that have made me laugh. That may be due to the fact that I haven’t watched many. Of those that I can think of, the Bigas Lunas films I’ve seen (in particular Jamon Jamon and The Tit and The Moon) just seem to rely on terrible sex gags (much like a Spanish Carry On film), and Les Vistiteurs was just Jean Reno with a silly haircut. I’m sure there have been more, but I just can’t think of them right now.

3) Mehmet Ali Erbil

When I was in senior school, someone once pointed out the picture of the astrologer for The Sun, Russel Grant, looked like he’d had his photo taken whilst he was standing in a wind tunnel. His mouth was open, so he looked like a letterbox and it made him look like his face was being inflated. I only bring this up as that’s the EXACT EXPRESSION that Mehmet has throughout much of the movie. In fact it’s not just throughout the movie, but also on the poster, so you can exactly what I mean just by scrolling upwards! Now facial expressions can transcend language barriers and I’d like to think that if maybe Rowan Atkinson, Marty Feldman or Stan Laurel were born in Turkey, and still made their movies I’d at least laugh due to their facial expressions alone. I think maybe Mehmet was trying this, but it just doesn’t work. He’s definitely more Mr Has-been than Mr Bean.

  

The only way I can judge this movie is exactly on what I took from it, and although this is a pretty rubbish movie, I’m not sure it deserves to be on the list. I found it funnier than most of the comedies on this list (meaning I laughed a couple of times) so far, and it does have a coherent storyline, which is more some of the movies we’ve watched. However, looking at the reviews on IMDB, and based on the fact that this movie didn’t get much of a release outside of Turkey, I can only assume that most of the poor ratings on IMDB, initially at least, came from a Turkish audience. So I think we’ll have just to trust their judgement that this movie truly is a large, stupid looking, farmyard bird and that it deserves its place on the list..

#55 Keloglan vs. The Black Prince (2006) (Colin)

Now I don’t want to come all over Radio 4, (that would be a bit messy), but our next movie is subtitled. At last, a bit of culture in 'Colin and Wes Watch 100 Bad Movies', I hear you cry. ‘Indeed’, I reply, but this is me and I’m afraid I’m not so much Mark Kermode, but more like Mark Commode.  Therefore the smutty humour will probably still come out.

Our next film is the Turkish ‘comedy’: 'Keloglan vs The Black Prince' (2006). Regular readers of our blogs will know that if we can’t find the movie we are supposed to watch on our list, then we have to watch 2 films from our back up list as punishment and yet again, there was a real possibility we would have to go to the ‘subs bench’. This proved more difficult to find than Tesco’s accountants.

With the fear of an Adam Sandler double bill beckoning, we decided we would have to search beyond our street, outside of our town, heck we were even prepared to go out of our county.  And to much relief find it we did......in Turkey! (Well OK, we didn't go to Turkey.  Amazon did that bit for us).

Success! And so we settled down for an evening of subtitled, high-brow entertainment.  We put on our smoking jackets, ironed our copy of The Times and poured out a nice brandy……

Someone farted and I chuckled…….

Set in a Fairytale land, Keloglan, (Mehmet Ali Erbil), is trying to win the hand of the Princess, (I’m not sure what’s wrong with the rest of her). He starts the movie with long blonde hair and is not called Keloglan in an attempt to confuse me. He is called something else which sounded hard to spell (and which the subtitles suggested meant Goldilocks). Keloglan means ‘bald man’, so you can probably guess what happens to our hero early on in the movie, (nevertheless, I’ll refer to him as Keloglan throughout as it’s easier and less letters to type than the other name).

Keloglan feels that in order to woo the Princess, he must do something elaborate and so he asks the Sultan for tasks in order to prove his worth. The Sultan does not seem all that bothered as Keloglan's luscious blond hair is enough evidence of his great potential, (To be honest, I think the Sultan just wants shot of her and would give the Princess away for free in every box of Cheerios).

A disappointed Keloglan goes for a walk and as luck would have it, stumbles upon the Princess who is being attacked by a dragon. Realising this is the chance to prove himself, he sets about trying to defeat the dragon, but is stopped in his tracks by the Black Prince, (Ozcan Deniz).

The Black Prince is a handsome, (so I’m told), but evil man.  After a little rant about how great he is and how Keloglan is not, he turns around to save the Princess and promptly knocks himself out on a tree branch.

Seizing his opportunity, Keloglan grabs the Black Prince’s sword and cuts off the dragon’s head. The Princess is grateful and is about to pucker up and plant one on him when she suddenly remembers that this particular dragon has 2 heads. A shocked Keloglan turns around to see the other head, which is launching some nice hot fire in the direction of his hair. Keloglan, hair on fire, dunks his head in a nearby pond, but it’s too late and he becomes Keloglan: the bald man.

Now he’s a slaphead, the Sultan decides that Keloglan should maybe prove himself after all and sets Keloglan task after task since the singed bonce incident. The latest challenge is to get a belt of a giant (!?), Unperturbed, Keloglan sets off on the task with a Jack Sparrow lookalike, (although he’s less Pirates of the Caribbean and more Pirates of the Caribbean: On Strangers Tides).

Meanwhile, we get a background story as to why The Black Prince is such a meany. He is pissed off that all the goodies in Fairytale Land get a book with them as the main star and he doesn’t have a single book, not a sausage.  He finds inspiration in Robin Hood, a baddie, (erm, no he wasn’t, he was the ultimate goodie!), who had many books written about him.  He reckons that if he manages to get it on with The Princess, the story writers will be flocking to write books about him. 

Back to Keloglan and joining him and Jack Sparrow is a man who suspiciously looks like a woman with a tash sellotaped to her upper lip.  This is because she is and it turns out she rather likes Keloglan and is trying to woo him and convince him to forget about the Princess, (I don’t remember her name, so I’ll call her Bob, (short for Kate), in honour of the Blackadder character this whole thing reminds me off).

Keloglan, Jack and Bob come up with a plan to hire an actress as the giant.  They will then blu-tac a false beard to her, (Bob has a vast collection for some reason), wheel her to the Sultan and be married to the Princess in time for Emmerdale.

The plan works and the Sultan gives his blessing to Keloglan to marry the Princess who is now doing her best Queen Victoria impression, (she is not amused).  The Black Prince is having none of it and suspecting that the tale of how they got this giant is as fishy as a mermaid’s wet bits, finds his own giant and takes him to the castle.

Keloglan’s plan unravels as the Black Prince’s giant is actually the giant actress’s boyfriend!  Recognising her fella, the beard falls down, (ooer), all is revealed, (double ooer) and Keloglan loses the princess to the Black Prince.

Does Keloglan give up, oh I really wish he did, but by Jiminy he carries on prolonging the agony of this movie and engages in a sword fight with The Black Prince during the pre-wedding reception, (The Black Prince is annoyed, he wanted a toastie sandwich maker).

Keloglan loses and the Black Prince gets the Princess and it looks like Keloglan has lost.  However, he realises that the Princess is not a ‘goodie’ but is bad and that the Princess was never his real true love.  This pisses the Black Prince of a bit because now that he has a ‘baddie’ Princess, the book will not be written about him.

Keloglan gives Bob a smackeroo and his hair grows back.  It turns out his true love was a girl in a moustache all along……..and they all lived happily ever after!

I was brought up with the advice ‘if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all’.  So thanks for reading my blog, see you on the next movie…..

That off course was a joke, which means that I have a least one more joke in my blog than Keloglan manages throughout the entire movie.  Keloglan fell into the old trap we are seeing on our bad movies list, of being a comedy movie, that is completely devoid of comedy.

As I sit here trying to review this laughless film, I am questioning whether I have not found this funny due to a cultural thing?  Did the gags get lost in translation, (remember, this was in Turkish and so I had to watch the movie with English subtitles)?  The answer, I believe, is no.  The reason is that this is a movie largely relient on slapstick comedy and is therefore visual, language should have been no barrier.

The truth is that this movie is like the top of Keloglan’s head, there’s nothing there.  The gags are very much of the ‘Meet The Spartans’ or ‘Epic Movie’ genre and like these films, they are lame, not clever and above all, not funny; The CGI has been borrowed from the SyFy channel and sometimes it looks OK, but they just add to the already cheap feeling of the movie; and the script was so sparse, that actually we did not need subtitles after all.

At the end of the day, I actually quite liked the idea of the baddies in Fairytale Land trying to get the books written about them and being jealous of the goodies.  I feel that this has potential but has been poorly executed by this movie.

This land of Fairytale and their traditional characters, will obviously bring on comparisons to movies such as Shrek.  In fact in many ways, this movie is exactly like Shrek.  Unfortunately it is more Shrek: The Third, (a truly awful version of the franchise).

Therefore my advice is to avoid this movie, which if you live in the UK is nice and easy as it is not on general release.  If you do go against my warning, however, be aware: This is not a Fairytale, it’s more like a nightmare.