Allan Karlsson is not your average elderly individual. He is more likely to be found handling explosives than kicking back in his retirement. Without a second thought, Allan decides to escape his retirement community on his one hundredth birthday, but little did he know the  adventures this escape would bring.

In this quirky movie, the audience sees Allan’s past adventures and his present ones as well. With his knowledge and love for explosives, young Allan travels the world and makes the acquaintance of many major figures in history, such as Joseph Stalin, General Franco, and the fictitious dumber brother of Albert Einstein: Herbert.

Even in his old age, Allan is still the man of his youth: daring and plain-spoken. After leaving his retirement community, he comes across a bus station where he encounters an angry gang member who is travelling with a suitcase full of money. Allan, being the man he is, steals the cash-filled suitcase and climbs on a bus, leading to an epic chase involving a gang, an elephant, and numerous dead bodies.

As a lover of quirky movies, it was impossible for me to resist watching The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared. Allan’s fantastical yet historically rich life is beyond amazing. He experiences the Spanish Revolution, helps invent the atomic bomb, befriends Harry S. Truman, and takes part in a wide variety of political disputes.

The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared originally was a book, and it’s a hilarious story full of history, adventure, and excitement in the movie adaptation. Characters in the movie speak six different languages, and there are a flurry of subtitles throughout the film. I absolutely loved the movie and all the dark humor, though the subtitles were rather annoying.

The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared is a refreshing movie that includes dark humor and highlights major moments in world history. As a lover of adventure movies, this movie was one of my favorites. It was so clearly different from the usual movie, with a crazy old man whose life was fantastically epic and influential.