CzechIsInTheMail presents: The Wrong Mr Johnson

CzechIsInTheMail Productions & cool.pool.films present:
The Wrong Mr Johnson

This feature film (which I co-produced last summer in Prague) is a comedy love story that begins with a mix up. Two Americans flying into Prague, both named Jim Johnson, are mistaken for each other at the airport.

should you by some lucky coincidence be in Berlin on February 9th or 14th please come see Wrong Mr. Johnson at the Berlinal Film Festival.
February 9th, 2 pm & February 14th, 10am at CineStar 5 theatre, Potsdamer Str. 5, Berlin.
for a preview take a peek by clicking any of these images to get to our web site for the film.
or read the review by well known english film critic Phillip Bergson:
Comedy from the heart. Few feature films first-footing in the European Film Market can be called as utterly independent as The Wrong Mr Johnson - or as completely captivating. For this is a charming East-West romantic comedy, with the feel of a Roman Holiday, the look of a Breakfast at Tiffany's, yet with utterly contemporary, and rather adult content. It is set - and was shot entirely - in Prague, with ecstasy-popping skin-heads, none-too-happy hookers, and miscegenation in its merry mix of misunderstandings between visiting Americans and Bohemians of a literal kind.In fact, it is the second feature written and directed by Philadelphia-born Carl Haber, a long-time resident of Rome, but now currently Professor of Directing and Acting at a Prague Film School (the PCFE), His first, L'Amico di Wang, was an award-winner at the WorldFest-Houston and he has also worked on films with Amanda Plummer and Ruben Blades.'I wanted to make a film that in some way followed in the spirit of Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges', Haber admits. 'So I focussed on script and found myself able to cast excellent Czech actors - I found them among the best in the world, the hardest working. There is an intimacy and honest in the performances I'm very happy with and grateful for. The film deals with a few important ideas - abusive relationships, destiny in love, sex tourism, racism - without preaching about them, but while light-hearted, has a heart and a story worth telling. It is a movie that still believes in dreams coming true, but has no illusions about how easy it is to make that happen.'Prague has fluctuated somewhat as a centre of film-making. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, state subsidies dwindled and Czech films have had to fight for audiences as auteurs lost their local fans and Hollywood fare invaded the newly-mushrooming multiplexes. Lately domestic comedies, often teen or sex-targeted, have been performing spectacularly well at the Czech box-office (Jiri Menzel's I Served the King of England - an award-winner in Berlin and Bitola last year - was viewed by almost a tenth of the country's population). But the city's own studios seem keener to attract bigger-budget productions from overseas than accommodate home-grown films. Beer commercials for Russia are as likely to fill sound-stages in Prague today as new works by Forman or Chytilova, who probably can not afford the going rates to shoot where their careers began. Last year's Berlinale opener La Vie en Rose was actually a 'vie de Boheme': the down-town Prague Crowne Plaza doubled for Piaf's Manhattan hotel.So it is an encouraging enterprise to find The Wrong Mr Johnson, doubtless made with but a fistful of koruna (or a handful of dollars) genuinely bringing together Czech and international talents in the story, on the screen, as well as behind the camera. Indeed, a lot of the plot revolves around linguistic confusions as the main character, twenty-something Veronika, clearly can't speak English when she is despatched to Ruzyne Airport to pick up her American 'client'. In the leading role, Klára Issová (selected as a European Shooting Star at the 2007 Berlinale) has never been better. Though still young herself, she has been acting on TV and in films since she was a teenager, but here absolutely blossoms as the film progresses, from a hopeless, hapless, dowdy girl, put upon by her thuggish boyfriend, into a beautiful, radiant woman at the finale. Comparisons with Audrey Hepburn are certainly not out of place.Another local star, the singer Lucie Vondrácková, shines in the cameo part of a tart without heart, while American veteran Nick Mancuso is uproariously comic and Jeffrey Joseph provides an oasis of tenderness, as each sort of shares the title role, in different but distinct ways. The Wrong Mr Johnson is a very entertaining comedy of errors that can only benefit from festival exposure and should soon be pulling in the right numbers on theatrical release. From the heart of Europe, this is a film that certainly has heart - a truly funny Valentine.
... last, but not least... see the trailer