FC Venus is a movie with a unique concept that unfortunately never realizes its potential. The movie plays off the gender stereotypes that men are crazy over sports while women are vehemently not in order to generate comedy. FC Venus revolves around a group of "soccer widows" (wives and girlfriends, plus one gay man) who view their partners' passion for football with resignation edged with resentment. In fact, the movie highlights early on how football-crazy the gang of men is when they play a game immediately after one of them gets married.Things come to a head when the men reveal their plans to go to the World Cup in Berlin during a child's birthday party. The women are all up in arms, and led by Anna (Minna Haapkylä), challenge the men to a soccer game. The women will get the World Cup tickets if they win, and the men will have to give up soccer in any form forever. If the men win, however, the women have to pay for their tickets.Fortunately for the women, Anna is a skilled player, having been a promising amateur when she was a girl. But she also holds a grudge against the game, blaming it for breaking up her family (her father Lauri (Taneli Mäkelä) left her mother for a coaching job abroad)). But her coaching skills are minimal forcing her to bring in her estranged father to help the team.What makes this film unique is the concept of using soccer as a metaphorical way to deal with gender conflicts between wives and husbands. But the filmmakers fail to develop this concept to its fullest potential, seemingly being unable to make its mix of sports movie and relationship comedy into a coherent organic whole. A particular disappointment is the climatic game, which should not only have been funny and exciting, but also have resolved the conflicts running through the film. Instead, it ends up being dull and confusing, with the filmmakers being unable to communicate the flow of the game.Further hampering the film's thematic development is the fact that there is no strong chemistry between Anna and her partner Pete (Petteri Summanen). Their relationship is actually the focus of FC Venus, but it is not very well developed. The audience is really given no reason to care if the two end up together or not (although of course they do). In general, in fact, the men of FC Venus are not very interesting characters.Still, FC Venus has plenty of minor pleasures. Minna Haapkylä is an engaging actress and the film has several entertaining minor characters, notably Noora Peltokukka's daffy Sari. The movie also provides plenty of character-based comedy as the women gradually evolve from soccer ignoramuses to football fanatics themselves.Ultimately, the message of FC Venus seems to be that that the relationship between partners or spouses can only be strengthened if the women are more involved with their men's interests. The movie shows at the end that the women have bonded with their men over the love of football, and that is supposed to be the happily ever after of the film.FC Venus is worth watching, but only if you keep your expectations low and don't mind a weak (but still slightly amusing) ending.

Disclaimer first: there is no way I will refer to football with the S-word. With this out of the way, I will say that this was a sweet and nice little comedy, with some really, really, REALLY funny scenes and lines, that manages to make a few interesting points about men, women and relationships. Actually, the only parts of the movie that require suspension of disbelief are those related to football, but it s a comedy, not a documentary, and the rest is straight, honest fun. I don't understand why our Finnish friends are so hard on it. Watch this movie with your girlfriend, preferably in the summer just before the World Cup, and, apart from a pleasant evening, you may find in the coming days, that the fight for the remote wont be that intense. For the first couple of games. At least. Maybe.

With FC Venus it is a rare pleasure/torture to see a film which is partially well done and partially awful. The pleasure is that all the scenes that are about the soccer game are carefully worked with a good amount of dramatics and game technicalities. The torture is that everything else in the movie is just painful watching.A good load of fine actors don't really improve a film if directing is terrible; the dialogue is lost in a messy scene of too many people waiting one to recite some limping lines that are supposed to be funny. It is difficult to concentrate on the dialogue as the speaking voice is taped so poorly that it makes you feel that you are completely outsider in regards to the film events. No close shots to speakers and no idea what is generally going on. A lot of talk about sex is used to replace more usual humor. The cameo by Aki Riihilahti and Mikael Forssell looks only embarrassing in this context.It seems that the movie makers have been too much concentrated to train the bunch of actors to love and play soccer because they have forgotten to finish the drama part of the movie. If that was to hint how much more fun sports is than movies I think it shouldn't have been done this way. The match day is worth watching but it may render you only sad because everything that comes before it is rather unpleasant.

After seeing the movie I was a little bit shame to be Finnish because the film was.. How do you say it nicely? crabby. The weakness of Finnish films is that there is always same actors playing parts and even lovers tend be same couple all over again (Minna Haapkylä and Petteri Summanen are once again a couple) In Finland we have a lot of unemployed actors and if given a chance there would be other actors running the show for a change. Apart the few good jokes the movie was unpredictable and boring. My boyfriend and I keep guessing what will happen next... And unfortunately were right. You can even guess the exact line once in a while.. The film is supposed to be enjoying, not frustrating!One fact was particularly horrible. !!!!HERE MIGHT BE A LITTLE SPOILER!!!! The rules how you could get to the team was that you would have to have slept with somebody who was a member of the other team (Most of them were married with each other). One couple had a son and he had a girlfriend. They hadn't have sex yet. Adult members of the women team almost forced the girl to have sex with his guy because that way they could have her on the team (the guy was already a member on men's team). How preposterous! I mean it is certain that at some point the boy and girl will eventually get between the sheets but adult behavior of that kind is ridiculous and immature even in case of joke!If you want to hang your brains on the shelf this movie is just right for you!5/10