Yes Nurse! No Nurse! Movie Review

The trailer for Yes Nurse! No Nurse! offers a slow-motion sequence inspired by Singin' in the Rain, giving us our hero coaxing his lady into leaping over a puddle... only to have her splat right in the middle of it.

Alas, what follows in the real thing is not the spoof we're expecting, but rather a working class musical that borrows from the great MGM classic song-and-dance flicks, and filtered through the lens of a Scandinavian sensibility.

The story, irrelevant though it may be, concerns the guest house of nurse Sister Klivia (Loes Luca), which is inhabited by a group of wacky residents who annoy the neighbor next door. He tries to get the guest house shut down, and when a thief moves in (long story), maybe he'll get his chance.

Naturally, most of this story is told in elaborate and silly dance numbers, including a scene where the crotchety neighbor busts out some breakdance moves that would put M.C. Hammer to shame. But in casting everyone as a dancing fool (all under the watchful eye of the incredibly creepy Luca), the plight of the guest house residents never engages us. Sweet and innocent to a fault, the wild tangents the movie takes us on ultimately feel strange for the sake of being strange.

Which isn't to say that Nurse is without merit. It's fun and meticulously choreographed, and the actors know the material they're aping. Any fan of musicals will probably delight in this import oddity -- even if only for a precious few moments.

Aka Ja zuster, nee zuster.