The author of this review had very few opportunities to watch his home town on the big screen. Despite having large number of sunny days per year, despite exotic and attractive locations and despite high concentration of young, attractive and talented people Split never became Croatian equivalent of Los Angeles. Furthermore, Croatian film-makers tended to ignore Split, even in the first decade of Croatian independence. Few years after Split had briefly appeared in Michael Winterbottom's Welcome to Sarajevo, Split film-maker Ognjen Sviličić gathered enough financial and political support for Da mi je biti morski pas (also known as Wish I Were a Shark), comedy set in his home town.
Film's protagonists are Kristijan (played by Vedran Mlikota) and Mate (played by Josip Zovko), two young men from Zagora, Dalmatian hinterland. Two of them are going to spend night in city of Split, hoping to pick local girls. Of course, two of them don't have a clue about big town and that leads to all kinds of trouble. In the meantime, local brewery worker Ive Dumanić (played by Elvis Bošnjak) loses his job because he pushed the wrong button and mixed the entire supply of local beer with tonic.
Da mi je biti morski pas was envisioned as comedy set in bright Mediterranean town known for its particular brand of humour and unique set of local characters. Sviličić obviously tried to offer some kind of alternative to bleak post-war realities and solemn history so enamoured by other Croatian film-makers. But this didn't work for one very simple reason. Bright warm hearted and lively Mediterranean place glorified in Miljenko Smoje's fiction doesn't exist after the decade marked by war and great demographic shifts. Sviličić could have solved this problem by setting the film in 1970s. The title, inspired by popular rock song of that period, together with soundtrack, suggest that the story is set in those times. Unfortunately, nostalgia for everything before 1990s were frowned upon in Tudjman's Croatia so Sviličić turned Split into limbo where people listen to 1970s music and use 1990s items.
Another problem for Sviličić was the fact that he shot the film in the middle of winter. Bad weather forced him to shoot most of the exteriors in the night. Narrow and dark streets of ancient Mediterranean city looked more suitable for horror than for comedy.
The worst flaw of the film is in poor quality of humour. Sviličić uses some broad character stereotypes (Zagora inhabitants as pathetic hicks, network of their cousins as solution of every problem imaginable, Split women as arrogant image-obsessed bitches) and, when that fails, turns to quirkiness in characters. That quirkiness often becomes darkness and, instead of being funny, Da mi je biti morski pas is depressing. Edita Majić and Vanča Kljaković provide some good dramatic performances in supporting roles, but those roles don't actually belong to this sort of film. The script also suffers from couple of unnecessary scenes and the ending is too surreal.
Because of all that, most of Split cinema audience had more fun in recognising their fellow citizens on screen than in the film itself. There are couple of scenes that work, though. This is mostly due to Mlikota and Zovko showing some genuine comedic talent in their roles. Da mi je biti morski pas deserves most of the praise for the mere fact that it proved that Split-themed film could be made in modern times. Audience that expects good Split-themed film is going to wait a little bit longer.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on August 16th 2004)
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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/566741-da-mi-je-biti-morski-pas
Critic: A
