Common Sense Media Review
By Barbara Shulgasser-Parker
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Innocent couple arrested in dull comedy; language.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 13+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Watch
Videos and Photos
Oregon
Parent and Kid Reviews
What's the Story?
In OREGON, Hakan (Serkan Cayoglu) and Gaye (Ferit Aktug), two former Turkish film students, visit Istanbul and try to return a borrowed audio cassette to an old friend while the friend isn't home. The building's alarmist superintendent assumes they are burglars and calls the police, but not before Gaye pushes the thin-skinned superintendent down a flight of stairs. Though not injured, he wants to press charges. Many unrelated characters are given long, winding scenes citing problems, including a wistful sex worker at the police station, a retired colonel with grievances, a filmmaker who dreams of working with a star, and a police commissioner who fears a terminal illness. By the end of the day, the focus returns to the central conflict, and the mess is sorted out.
Is It Any Good?
If only any of the characters were more than clichés, if only Oregon didn't wander off into dull monologues about love, war, and filmmaking, this could have made an amusing student film or short. As it stands, the only interesting character is a famed actor played by the confident Nejat Isler, and he doesn't show up until the last 15 minutes. The director clearly set out to make a good movie but the judgment is off. He has said that he liked this script because it was set in the '80s, a time when he believed people were "more naïve." He claims that everyone then thought the 1980s was a "bad" time, but, according to him, we now know that every succeeding decade has been far worse. This is an interesting premise, but it doesn't really show up in the film.
Instead, he's created a comic exaggeration of his characters' naivete to the degree that the characters just seem ignorant and ill-informed. It's us looking back condescendingly who feel wrong and naïve in our view of them. The film ends with another cliché -- we learn how some of the characters we never began to care about ended up 20 years later.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the way that characters make everything about themselves. Why do you think the filmmakers decided to roam from the central plot to showcase a sex worker, a retired colonel, an underappreciated superintendent, and a self-absorbed film director?
Does the movie do a good job of telling the audience which characters are important and which are not? How does that affect the quality of storytelling?
Do you think this would have been better if it had been shorter, with fewer extraneous characters? Why or why not?
Movie Details
- On DVD or streaming : November 10, 2023
- Cast : Nejat Isler , Serkan Cayoglu , Ferit Aktug
- Director : Kerem Ayan
- Inclusion Information : Middle Eastern/North African Movie Actor(s)
- Studio : Netflix
- Genre : Comedy
- Run time : 93 minutes
- MPAA rating :
- Last updated : November 24, 2023
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