Budbringeren

Plot synopsis:
Jerry's childhood friend Frankie Merman (Dana Gould) promises to get Jerry a new car as a thank you for a show he did for Frankie's car dealership. George prepares for his weekly call to his parents. Kramer plans his revenge on Pottery Barn because of the overabundance of catalogs they've sent him in the past month. Elaine is back with David Puddy, but after having a "love at first sight" encounter with diner patron Jack (Toby Huss), she plans to keep Puddy in reserve until she finds out if the new guy can "handle the workload".
Kramer gets deluged with more catalogs and plans to stop the mail. George's parents cut him short on his weekly phone call. The "car" Jerry gets is a van and not the Saab he'd hoped for. Frankie reminds him of the childhood dream they had where they got a van and toured the country. Jerry doesn't want the van, but doesn't want to hurt Frankie's feelings by refusing to take it. (Frankie's childhood nickname was "Fragile Frankie" due to his penchant for emotional extremes, a trait that does not appear to have changed in adulthood.) George pops in on his parents and reminds his parents that they didn't call him back, but they have to leave right away. Kramer bricks up his mailbox, but that doesn't stop his mail from being delivered to Jerry's mailbox.
Jerry plans to sell the van; Kramer helps him out by composing a classified ad that cites "interesting trades considered." Kramer goes to the post office to cancel his mail permanently. Newman confesses to him that no one really needs mail but that there is a greater conspiracy at work.
George demands to know what's going on with his parents; they tell him they are cutting him loose. George isn't ready for abandonment; he plans to date his cousin Rhisa as a means of getting his parents involved in his life. While going through an old VHS tape, Jerry discovers an old commercial that features Jack as "The Wiz," a mascot for the electronics store of the same name. Meanwhile, Kramer wants Jerry's van and offers Anthony Quinn's old T-shirt as an "interesting trade".
Elaine, after seeing Jack as "The Wiz", wants Puddy back but is rejected by him. Kramer uses the van to launch his anti-postal campaign. George's cousin is into their relationship; however, George schemes to have his parents catch him making out with her. Jerry searches Central Park for Frankie, who has gone to dig a hole and sit in it. Meanwhile, George parks the van there and Frankie finds it and yells "Seinfeld's Van! Seinfeld's Van!", which George thinks is "Son of Sam". Because of the yelling, The Costanzas find the van and begin having sex in it. Jerry goes to apologize to Frankie and helps him out of the hole. They and George and Rhisa see the van "rocking"; they open it up and see the Costanzas "in flagrante delicto". Frankie advises Jerry that he must sell the van after seeing what they saw, to which Jerry agrees.
Kramer is captured and enlightened by the Postmaster General Henry Atkins (played by Wilford Brimley, with the scene a parody of his role in the climactic scene of Absence of Malice). As he leaves he sees Newman being led into the room who says to Kramer, "Tell the world my story." Jack, Elaine's new boyfriend, gets his second piece of good news in one day: he's "The Wiz" again and she is taking him back. George is with his parents who describe him about the lovemaking and they prepare to do it again, much to George's disgust.

Tags: romantic

Review:
Once we rented this movie just to see what it was about.
It focuses on Oslo mailman Roy Amundsen, who is sort of down on his luck.
When she leaves her key in a mailbox, he has it copied, gets locked in her apartment, and gets a little (or a lot) more than he bargained for!
Some of the world's most interesting movies have come from Scandinavia (e.g., anything by Ingmar Bergman).
"Budbringeren" (called "Junk Mail" in English) is no exception.
This look at some of Norway's grittier aspects is truly eye-opening.
Odd Norwegian black comedy.
Like a Nordic Coen Brothers film, this is more concerned with portraying quirky characters and odd scenarios, but despite some nifty camerawork, it is a rather ugly film, revelling in its depressingly squalid milieu without making any real point at the end of the day.
The anti-hero remains a complete enigma throughout, but funnily enough, despite my reservations at the beginning, it was rather hard not to be won over at the end of the day.
There were some marvellously taut action and suspense sequences, and some hilariously humourous scenes.
Rather similar to most Scandinavian films I've seen actually.
Junk Mail is a Norweigan movie, and it is as black a comedy as I've seen.
But the makers of the movie have stumbled onto a comedic truth that never fails: take an aberrant character trait, and take it to the absolute limit.
In the process of sneaking around a deaf girl's apartment whom he fancies, he saves her life after she tries to commit suicide.
This weird movie will NOT work for you if you don't think it's funny.
And this movie will only be funny for you to the degree that you're cynical and capricious in your affections.
People of good heart, stay away..
A Kinder and Gentler Peeping Tom Movie.
JUNK MAIL (3+ outta 5 stars) Offbeat but sincere comedy-thriller about a lonely postman who comes across a set of keys accidentally left in the mailbox by a cute young girl on his route.
He makes a copy of her keys and secretly checks out her apartment while she is at work.
He also has a habit of disposing of junk mail in an out of the way train tunnel (whether this is out of sheer laziness or to spare the people on his route the bother is never really explained).
One day he accidentally falls asleep and is trapped inside the girl's bedroom when she comes home from work and then...
Suffice to say that things get a little more complicated.
This quirky little Norwegian film didn't get a whole lot of attention on its US release.
it's well-written and well-acted and definitely worth checking out.
This is in fact a tightly controlled film about a man who does good despite himself..
Although little appears to happen in this film, it is in fact a very well controlled piece about a postman who has opted out of engaging  with the world.
He accidentally saves the life of a suicidal woman, and through committing this unintentional good act becomes a better person - entirely against his will.The performances are flawless, and the direction unobtrusive, giving the illusion of effortlessness that is in fact very hard to achieve.
Despite being a film of great moral complexity, Junk Mail wears its serious purpose very lightly, and is in fact very funny indeed.Certainly one of the best films to come out of Scandinavia in recent years, and one which shows a side of Oslo few outsiders ever witness..
Short and sweet with a lot of original material!.
This film depicts Oslo as a rather run-down city which, as far as I can remember, it is not; and as for the Norwegian Postal Service ...well that seems to be struggling along if we can judge by the unreliable antics of Roy (Robert Skjaerstad), one of the young postmen.
He not only opens and reads private mail, but also lets himself into an apartment when he finds a key left in a mail-box.
His exploration of the rooms leaves little time for delivering letters so he dumps the contents of his bag in a railway tunnel.
The originality of the story is completely charming as it blends romance, suspense and comedy in which Roy seems to get involved at every turn.
One scene I particularly like is the one in which a locomotive almost runs him down in the tunnel and scatters his letters high and wide like a flurry of snowflakes.
In another scene he is on the point of being gunned down in his own grungey apartment when nearby jackhammers reverberate throughout the whole building giving him the opportunity to make his get-away.
Unfortunately for Roy (always a loser it seems) his inscribed wrist watch falls off in his struggle and so the gunman is eventually able to trace his whereabouts.
The film is short and sweet, well worth watching.
It has a lot of originality in the script and the acting is first class.
The film suggests we should look under our beds before retiring .
One never knows who may be hiding there...particularly in Oslo..
A brilliant movie by Pal Sletaune!
It's probably the "greyest" film I've ever seen.
In my opinion the best Norwegian film ever, and it is absolutely worth watching.
But like most movies, it is best in its original language, so people who doesn't speak Norwegian won't have the same experience, I guess...
But it's still worth watching because of the depressing mood in it(!)..
A postman is like a taxi-driver, a medium of connecting people and places.
Like the taxi driver, the postman lives a vicarious life: he sees others living theirs, but has no part in it himself.
Unlike other people, who generally stay in their allotted social position - in work, home and play - the postman and taxi driver are mobile and fluid: they are urban creatures who can unite people, classes, places that normally would remain apart.If there is one genre that depends on connection, cross-class and -space mobility, it is the detective genre.
A detective needs to be able to connect disparate clues and suspects into the single narrative of a crime.
'Junk mail' begins with a crime, filmed with some urgency, as a couple mug a security guard and steal a large amount of money.
This is, to the audience, a random, inexplicable act - we don't know who any of these characters are, and why they are in this situation.The next sequence introduces the film's protagonist, the postman.
He opens their mail.
By mixing his job and his personal perversions, he is able to explain that opening sequence, find the clues and piece them together.Normally, the detective is a moral force - he restores social order after the violation of a crime.
Roy is the least appealing 'hero' of modern cinema, filthy in personal habits, anti-social, the kind of cynical, cowardly brute who violates those who, through their own sins, have no legal redress.But he is also a non-entity: a comic scene of humiliation at work reveals him to have no talent whatsoever.
When he breaks into Line's apartment, he tries to imagine what it is like to be her, to the point where he unwittingly falls asleep on her bed.
He is Chesterton's invisible man (also a postman) - unnoticed because he's always there.Like many recent alienated urban heroes ('Chopper', 'Bleeder', etc.), Roy is a child of Travis Bickle, and the look of the film has the lurid, sickly colour of 'Taxi Driver', the city as vomit, with Roy hurtling towards his own warped redemptive rescue.
But there is a vision of Oslo as a dank, run-down bureaucracy similar to the Czech comedies of the 1960s, or, more obviously, Orwell (or 'Brazil'), that bespeaks a more social purpose - this is not the film the Norwegian tourist board will be distributing.
The glum scene where Roy is awarded a watch for bravery having been attacked by thugs (his strap got caught in his panicked hurry to oblige) is comically reminiscent of Kaurismaki..
the high art of making a light but melancholic movie.
it is about a postman who read the letters he's supposed to deliver and eventually even throws them away.
suddenly he finds himself in the middle of a absurd and even a little dangerous story.
but in my opinion just needs this story to talk about the relations between people.
and what makes this movie so special is the fact that it actually not just shows pictures and sequences you've seen a hundred-times before.it really has, i can't put it differently, respect for its personal.this means that the persons keep their own personality for the whole absurd-tragic story of the movie..
This has got to be one of the most miserable films that I have ever had the fortune to see.
I watched the film a couple of years back after it had been standing on my shelf for a year or so before that, it had me depressed and laughing and then depressed again throughout its hour and a half running time.Anyone who enjoys low budget, gritty realism type films should make the effort to see this.
It's about an Oslo postman who is a little bit too nosey for his own good.
His prying about other people lives leads him to trouble of the kind not generally associated with the postal service.
I'm not going to tell you everything about the movie because, to be honest, there isn't much to tell.
If you are lucky enough (and patient enough to watch a Norwegian language film) then you will have stumbled upon one of the greatest dark comedies you're ever likely to see.
Norway's greatest gift to an audience which is becoming more and more receptive of non-English language film..
This is definitely one of the best contemporary Scandinavian films with all the hallmark of a top artistic production.
All the characters are not without flaws and they are presented as anti-heroes.
The movie has a grunge atmosphere and it is laced with humour and mockery.
I can't really throw more light into this without creating too great an expectation for you except to say I really enjoyed it for pure entertainment.
I like the quaint odd-ball filmmaking style created by Pål Sletaune.
In the film, the main character, a man in his late thirties, not faring too well in life who's just waiting for something to happen, runs into the same woman several times and starts to take an interest in her.
When he sees her leave a key in her mailbox while on the job he can't resist; this was the first in many instances that left me saying "what the hell is this guy doing?".
Not only does he check out her apartment but he gets the key copied, and even gets trapped there on a return visit, resorting to hiding under the bed when the woman unexpectedly arrives.
Like the other reviewers were saying, this film does make Oslo look a bit shabby (not that I've been there).
It's is worth watching, just to see what this guy gets up to and it's a memorable viewing experience..
It starts out as a "look-what-a-s****y-life" type film, but it has more than that!
For instance it contains the best ever karaoke-scene on film, and the story is very intelligent and well composed (everything that happens in it is actually somehow connected).
It is really a story of love and how messing in other people's business can get you into trouble.
I didn't know delivering the mail could be so funny.
In my opinion this movie HAS a great plot and IS funny.
The tragic, dark, miserable lives of Oslo's lowlifes are brilliantly shown in this movie.
It's a well done low-budget movie .
In short : A great movie definitely worth spending time to watch..
I think it´s great.
The guy that wrote about it surely was looking for a Chevy Chase style movie or something like that.
"Junk mail" is a movie that shows the common feelings using a singular sense of humor similar to Woody Allen´s.
It´s a movie for people who think..
An almost perfect film..
The Dutch TV guide gave this the "Film of the Day" title and appropriately so.
Dark, tense, funny, fresh..
Dark, tense, funny, fresh..
The atmosphere of this film, with it's dirty, miserable version of Oslo, and the lowlife, ugly losers and criminals...
I think people who like "Down by Law"  and the Finnish part of "Night on Earth" might like this one too..
This has to be the best norweagian movie for many years.
This has to be the best norweagian movie for many years.
The carachters are great, the athmosphere is really dark, like in the center of town.
It really catches Oslo at it's darkest, things that we really know, but don't really think about.
Like how much does your mailman really know about you?
It's a fun movie as well, see it!!.
This was pretty good for a Norwegian film.
"Budbringeren" has got to be one of the best movies to come out of Norway in the recent years.
It isn`t a classic by any means, but it is a step in the right direction for Norwegian films(which mostly are REALLY BAD).This movie is dark and about a dodgy postman, who puts his nose where it doesn`t belong, and he soon has to pay for it.
This movie is about 80 minutes long so you won`t get tired or bored, which other Norwegian films should take a note of.
Odd black comedy from Scandinavia.
Junk Mail doesn't have much of a story and it's major message seems to be 'mind your own business'.
Robert Skjaestad plays a lazy postman who can't be bothered delivering all the catalogues and other junk, so he deposits it all in a railway siding hidden by a tunnel.
He's also a bit of a Peeping Tom, and without giving too much away he gets himself into an awkward situation involving some stolen money.
A bit of a nineties Billy Liar, Junk Mail ends on an unsatisying note that tries to tie up some loose ends but doesn't.
Perhaps this is the beginning of a Brave New Norwegian Cinema.
"Junk Mail", a comedy out of Oslo, tells of the activities of a grungy slug of postman whose curiosity and lack of good sense gets him in to a variety of undesirable situations.
The camera follows the slovenly little protag as he goes about his business among a meager cast with almost no script delivering mail and almost nothing which can be regarded as entertainment.
"Junk Mail" is the kind of unusual film which critics love and the public can't figure out why.
Factor in subtitles and this flick just isn't worth the time...unless you're a critic, of course.
One of the best movies in history....
The Norwegian movie, Budbringeren/Junk Mail, nearly got an Oscar.
The movie has changed the Norwegian film culture totally.
It's sarcasms and black humor are actually working well on most people.
The thing with Junk Mail is that people either like it, or not.
Many people from other contries, would think of Oslo as a horrible city...
Oslo is actually beautiful, well, most of it.
The only problem with this movie is that they are showing the worst parts of Oslo (The film was made in a small part of Oslo east).
It can make people from other contries think of Norway as a 'dirty' country...
Please don't think that about Norway just because of a 'black' film.
I do think that for an international movie, like this one, that they should have shot a few scenes in better parts of the city.
If you already have been to Norway, Junk Mail probably would be funnier to watch....
This guy probably thinks Chris Rock is God's gift to mankind.
The movie is funny, but it doesn't show off..
would like to tell you that the movie is categorized as IIB and shown at Cine-Art House only.
film title "Junk Mail" is used instead of 'Budbringeren';selling points of this feature on local paper included Cannes Festival, Sundance, Oscar best foreign film nomination..
This was another boring Norwegian movie.
movie.
The movie is not funny, but it was billed as a comedy.
This movie is not exciting, but it was billed as an adventure.
This film was not good, although some critics gave it a thumb up.
I guess that if you are Scandinavian you might enjoy it, because it is a Swedish film.
Though it was labeled as a "romantic thriller" on the videocassette that I rented, nothing can be further from either the romantic or the thriller than "Junk Mail." By some reason certain filmmakers think that simply putting a group of people in ugly surroundings they will make their film funny.
There must be also such old-fashioned things as scripting, acting and directing and these aspects are almost non-existent in this film.And its portrayal of Norway and Norwegians will unlikely make the country appealing to the outside world..
A dark little Goldilocks parable.
I can't agree with the wholly negative comments posted by some - I thought this was a nicely dark little film, with enough strange characters to keep you interested.
An Inauspicious Introduction to the Films of Norway.
Doesn't anyone in Norway take a bath regularly is all I could think of during most of the viewing of this misguided effort.
The film wanders so much that the viewer begins to think that they are making it up as they go along.
It will now be difficult for me to avoid films from Norway in the future..
This is one of the worst films I've ever seen.
Dull, drab lives of completely uninteresting people.
Going to see this movie is a complete waste of time and money.