The team behind the surprising, if uneven, Taximetrişti (2023) reunited for a follow-up that feels similar in style, but is considerably less inspired. Directed by Bogdan Th. Olteanu, who co-wrote the movie alongside the two leads, Adrian Nicolae and Cosmin Nedelcu, K&B is just a succession of scenes that sway between the unfunny and the uninteresting.
The set-up is simple enough: in debt to a loan-shark for 5k EUR after a botched crypto investment, Klaus organizes an “unauthorized” bachelor party at the club he works at and asks his grumpy, bouncer brother Barroso to help him out. A series of cliches ensues, sometimes vaguely amusing, sometimes blatantly self-conscious and unfunnily ironic, with a big finale that is just a bit better than the rest of the thing.
What stood out to me were the missed opportunities – just small details of how certain scenes are shot or lines are delivered that could have helped K&B stand on some funny ground. As it is now, there’s just very little to hang onto, with lukewarm performances from all involved, alongside stock skits and equally uninspired dialogue providing little to no entertainment. And when it’s not trying to crack a laugh, just like Taximetrişti, Olteanu plays certain scenes very straight, like existential drama straight, but they falter under the weightless characters they feature.
The one good thing to be said about it, in contrast to the minimis reference point of last year, Teambuilding (which involved a good bunch of the actors from this one), is that K&B doesn’t make your insides turn and your brain combust. It’s almost wholesome, in not relying on any swearing to make up the (anyway inexistent) funny.
It’s obvious that a formula is being milked, but this isn’t Miami Bici 2 or Nuntă pe bani, two of the biggest Romanian box-office movies of last year. I’m not sure that’s necessarily a bad thing, but Klaus & Barroso strives for the attention of a mass audience which it is unlikely to find. And beyond commercial success, there’s nothing there to vindicate its existence. 4
tributary stu 