Netflixable? Big City Chef feels “No Pressure” when she’s tricked to moving back to the farm

A bit of food, a dash of moonshine and a smattering of local color decorate “No Pressure,” a lackluster, lumbering Polish romantic comedy about finding love and life balance by leaving the big city for grandma’s farm.

Cinematographer turned director Bartosz Prokopowicz (“Chemo”) and screenwriters Karolina Frankowska and Katarzyna Golenia build this laugh-starved farce around a faked funeral, professional sabotage and mistaken identities used to trick Chef Oliwa (Anna Szymanczyk) into giving up her culinary life in Wroclaw for backward, pastoral Bodzki, in rural Podlachia.

Oliwa tells us in voice-over (in Polish, or dubbed into English) about her “hot temper.” But considering all she’s put through as she drops everything, begs for two days off from the boss, and gets her Mini stuck in the mud on the way to her beloved grandmother’s funeral, she maintains her cool.

Especially considering that grandma Halina (Anna Seniuk) pops up in her coffin and snaps “I had to find out if you were sad to see me go!”

That’s the sort of thing that only happens in rom-coms, Polish or otherwise, titled “Nic na Sile” or “No Pressure.”

When granny doubles-down after re-introducing lightly exasperated Oliwa to the farm by disappearing, leaving her career-woman granddaughter holding the bag, we’d expect more of a meltdown than Oliwa ever delivers.

After all, this is a busy time back at the restaurant, which is just about to expand. It was a hassle getting to “the literal middle of nowhere,” and part of that hassle was with this redhead (Mateusz Janicki) who blocked the one-lane bridge Oliwa was trying to cross, and who helps out on the farm. Supposedly this is Wojtek and not the herb grower Kuba who, with his father, are trying to get their hands on the farm and put Halina out of business.

Oliwa finds herself sucked back into this life and all this drama despite being furious at her conniving granny and granny’s paramour (Artur Barcis) and not being all that keen on the life lesson they’re trying to teach her.

“Sometimes, you’ve got to do something bad to do something good.”

Say what?

The colorful, cute neighbors aren’t all that colorful or cute. The mistaken identity thing is dragged out when aspiring pop-singer Wojtek — the real one (Filip Gulacz) returns and is enlisted in the scheme.

The Polish singing — pop, funeral dirge and folk — is a nice touch. But the misadventures with geese and goats and whatnot are weary tropes of the “back to the land/farm” comedy genre.

Like most every other element of the picture, it’s all been played before and played-out. So even if the stars had great, caustic chemistry — which they don’t — “No Pressure” was never going to surprise or delight .

And a comedy with no urgency, edge or stakes isn’t much of a comedy, with or without “pressure.”

Rating: TV-14

Cast: Anna Szymanczyk, Anna Seniuk, Mateusz Janicki, Artur Barcis and Filip Gurlacz.

Credits: Directed by Bartosz Prokopowicz, scripted by Karolina Frankowska and Katarzyna Golenia. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:52

Unknown's avatar

About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine
This entry was posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news. Bookmark the permalink.