No Pressure 2024 Movie Review
Poland, an entire village is busy keeping the urban Oliwka on her grandmother’s farm in a devious and slightly illegal manner. She submits to her imposed fate as if she has the kidnapped princess syndrome. When she arrives she openly hates the countryside, but within a few scenes she has completely forgotten her fancy job as a chef in the city. It’s not hard to guess how this will end.
A very predictable theme, but that doesn’t have to stand in the way of an entertaining comedy. After all, all the ingredients for mindless relaxation are present: lush nature, authentic farm cuisine, and animals that need to be petted, ridden or milked. Unfortunately, the romance in this film is hard to find and it mainly revolves around the creatures who venture where they don’t belong and relieve themselves in the most comical place they can find. And that’s not very funny.
Humorless and without tangible sentiment, Nic na Sile goes through the emotions uninspired. The romkom elements are very flat. For example, the meet cute with the attractive farmer is in no way ingenious: she simply runs him over. The promised comical bickering with the opponent is also minimal, and the eventual meeting of the main characters proceeds almost smoothly. Of course, that makes for a terribly boring romantic comedy.
There are many side characters and side paths in the story that are not interesting at all. The characters are insufficiently developed and too similar, their activities are taken from the air and do not support the story in any way. All those other storylines would distract from the main story and could be a nuisance, if it weren’t for the fact that the main story itself barely contains anything.
The acting also leaves much to be desired. Awkward dialogue is delivered by actors who don’t seem very interested in the script. Others overact with the annoying idea: the louder you shout it, the funnier it sounds. These and other attempts at humor fail miserably, and even the animals deliver better performances.
Nic na Sile heads towards the simplified ending without any content. Here and there, life in the Polish countryside is depicted between the meaningless dialogues. Fittingly, the final takes place during a large farmers’ festival full of Polish traditions. Perhaps fun for those who like that or have nostalgic feelings about it. For others there is little to gain from this film.
