Summary
Two cinematic families from one Prague building – the Bartáčeks and the Nováks – were reunited in 1980 after a successful debut in the comedy Zítra to roztočíme, drahoušku…! (We’ll Kick Up a Fuss Tomorrow, Darling...). In the first film from 1976, screenwriter-director Petr Schulhoff moved his characters from an old tenement to a new prefabricated building. The feuding families whose lives were flavoured with spite and malice are now neighbours who are both trying to get rich quick without any effort. This is primarily down to their relatives – Grandpa Novák and Rose, a rich aunt who has come from America to visit her family. However, the plans of these crafty wiseacres ultimately backfire… Like the first film, this is also a gentle small-community comedy, which humorously charts the vapid lives of people focusing on their vision of a “classy” existence. The Novák and Bartáček’s dream of wealth divests them of all their moral inhibitions. This time, the Novák’s son, Renek, is also involved in the action. He works as a taxi driver specialising in foreign clients…Set in the hard-line socialist reality of the 1980s, the film’s plot borrows the superficial notion of an affluent foreign capitalist country, but the calculating relatives end up being undermined by their equally devious American aunt. Naturally, the filmmakers didn’t name the roots of real problems in a society warped by socialism. Despite the fact that the sequel doesn’t scale the same heights of the first film, it is at least entertaining thanks to high-quality acting performances. In the role of Evžen Novák, Miloš Kopecký was replaced by Jiří Sovák. As Renek, Luděk Sobota moves away from playing scatter-brained ingénu roles, whose prototype was the protagonist in the comedy Jáchyme, hoď ho do stroje! (Joachim, Put Him into the Machine!, 1976). Stella Májová appears as Aunt Rose. In the previous film, she had played a completely different character – Ms Kočabová, who worked in a casting agency.
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