jm10701 This is a remarkably well constructed movie that is fascinating to watch yet somehow manages to fall flat. The many characters race constantly around Oslo on an atypically scorching summer day (nobody seems to walk there, regardless of the heat and sweat, or to drive slowly) on their various frantic individual quests, briefly intersecting or passing each other unknown and unknowing, until they all come together magically in the end.As others have already said, there is much in this movie that is derivative of earlier movies, but a good movie does not have to be innovative. However, it does - for me - almost always have to make me care about the characters, and that is what this one failed almost completely to do.I cared about only one of the dozen or so main characters scurrying and caroming around the city like pinballs, and he was the least frantic, the most unassuming of them all: little Magne, the younger (and quieter) of the younger pair of brothers, played with exquisite, tender understatement by Ferdinand Falsen Hiis.Magne was like a small but solid rock in this swirling storm of a movie, and it would have been been crushed under the weight of its own overwrought melodrama without him. To use a contrasting metaphor, he is like the gravity that keeps the universe from spinning out into nothingness.Erik Poppe gets one star for choreographing this frenetic dance, and Ferdinand Falsen Hiis gets four stars for holding it together just by being in it. He makes it worth watching. ALL the adults are just too frenzied to either believe or care about.

Amy Adler It is a hot summer day in Oslo, Norway and the lives of various people are heating up, too. A young couple has just welcomed a baby boy but, alas, he has a serious heart defect. It will cost a tremendous amount of money to send him to America for surgery. In another place, a mental patient is set to meet a long lost girlfriend. His mentor at the hospital is encouraging the meeting and looking out for his ward. Meanwhile, the mental patient's not-so-good brother is getting out of jail and hoping to meet up with his sibling, too, so they can travel to Hawaii for a new life. And, finally, two troubled young brothers have lost their father and are hiding from authorities who may have to separate them into different foster homes. But, isn't their mother still alive? Yes, but she has attempted suicide on two occasions. How will these lives intersect? This film is a nice glimpse into the universal and unique qualities of life in Norway. The large city is beset with problems, as all urban areas seemed to have, yes. However, the beautiful, older town is a pleasure to view. All of the actors are quite capable and compelling. Then, too, the use of the kaleidoscope as a scene changer is quite marvelous and lovely. And, above everything else, the story is a woven and intricate winner. All film enthusiasts who love the extraordinary will like this movie. It takes the viewer to a place and time most will never see in person, but, will consider familiar and welcome after the final reel.

mstoretvedt First of all, being a Norwegian myself (studying in Denmark), I have never really been fond of Norwegian movies, until a friend of mine back home send me Hawaii, Oslo as a present.I got a lot of mixed reaction from my friends back home that have seen this movie, (some didn't like it at all, some thought it was OK, some though it was excellent), so I didn't know whether to watch it or not, so my best friend brought it for me be to hear that i had to say about itSo, I can honesty say now, I don't understand why people wouldn't like this movie!!This is a beautiful and very touching film. I don't know some of my friends didn't like it (maybe they're not into touching/sad films), but I saw it and I was happy, touched and merely sad in different points throughout the movie. This movie really makes you think with an open mind and I really felt for characters in the movie.SO, a basic PLOT that doesn't give away a lot =P: It's based in Oslo and we follow the lives of various people, which was beautifully linked to bring these complete strangers together. All brought together by Vidar, who is considered as a "guardian angel".There are a lot of critics and people that can lash out saying, they didn't like it and many saying that they did, but honestly, I just think everyone should see the film and decide for themselves whether they liked it or not.

earlgoldcrap Brief Synopsis: Vidar can dream into the future. What he sees frightens him. Extreme Foreshadowing! He runs a Hostel for mildly "touched" Leon who pines for his girlfriend of fifteen years ago, Asa, now a detached stewardess character with no lines, no backstory, and no character development, who's returning to celebrate Leon's birthday and presumably to marry him, due to a "pact" they made when children, along with Leon's brother, Trygve, who is temporarily released from prison (serving time for being represented with homo-erotic undertones -- wet and naked in jail! -- and armed robbery), and uses the birthday as an excuse to escape prison, while on the OTHER side of town a couple gives birth to a child with a heart condition in an ambulance that will soon embark to rescue a mother of two indigent children who is attempting suicide for the second or third time...You know what, I give up. There are like seven more characters and two more plots. Only a few of these many many MANY characters have any real life to them (all of them are men, for some reason), and in the end you just want Bruce Willis to come in and save everyone from a burning building and get it over with. We could have used just one of these plot s to realize a handful of characters, a real story, with real exposition.Influences: Rips Off (Half Heartedly) "Les Arbre De Desire", "Run Lola Run", "If Lucy Fell", with a wee bit of "Rainman" and "Mystery Train" thrown in for color.Sorry Norway, you're no Morocco! For a great movie about learning how to love, see "Roads to Koktebel" or "Viva Laldjerie".