Dialogue of the movie: “You’re full of excuses.” “NO! I’m full of AMERICA!”
This week’s review is of a Jack Black tour de force, The Polka King. We here at MWMD love, love, love 3 things, 1) Jack Black movies! 2) Immigrants (who teach us about being American) and 3) True Story Movies, especially when they show the real people involved at the end (See: The Blind Side).
The Polka King is a 2017 movie starting the aforementioned Jack Black as Jan Lewan: the self proclaimed Polka King of Pennsylvania. (Who doesn’t like to do the Chicken Dance at weddings? What if the band had someone dressed up in a chicken costume during that number? Musical Gold, right?) This is why in 1995, Jan Lewan and his band were actually named as a nominee for the Grammy (Best Album Polka Category–yes, that’s a thing!)
Immigrants to our country have a wonderful way of showing us some of the best qualities of our country and what it means to be an American. People who are not from this country (and thus not born into it’s privileges) are possessed of an entrepreneurial spirit that oftentimes those of us with natural born citizenship shrug off. How many times have you heard of the immigrant arriving on our shores with literally nothing but the shirt on their back, making it to the 1%? Immigrants often possess a child-like innocence and wonder about the freedoms and opportunities this country has to offer.
One such individual was Jan Lewan(dowski) who immigrated to the US from Poland as a teenager. As the movie shows, he possesses to this day, a child-like appreciation and wonder for this country as evidenced by his polka classic, “To Be An American.” But that’s not all, he also has a Polka-Rap mashup “The Rappin’ Polka.”
But I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself…. Exactly where and how Jan learned to Rap, we’ll not reveal because as always, we here at MWMD HQ strive to present (mostly) spoiler-free movie reviews.
Jan has several business interests in addition to his Polka Band which is seemingly always booked for weddings in the greater Scranton area. He has the Jan Lewan Show Gift Shop. The Jan Lewan Flavored Vodka, Jan Lewan Pierogies, y mucho mas! In order to run this empire, Jan needs investors and he needs them stat. When the Pennsylvania state version of the SEC comes looking into what we soon realize is Jan’s Ponzi empire, he simply wonders in his naive way: “Why? We keep getting new investors, so the old investors are happy.”
Jack Black’s portrayal honestly captures Jan’s natural charisma and childlike wonder of being an American Immigrant. It’s easy to see how so many Polka fan investors, didn’t think twice about giving Jan their life savings. Lest the audience believes that Jack is simply putting on and taking liberties with the character, the movie ends with actual scenes of the real Jan Lewan entertaining his audiences and you see that not only is Mr Black’s portrayal spot on but his accent, mannerisms and human-ness were accurate as well. Mr. Black has made something of a minor career in portraying real life figures, who are seen as outsiders caught up in circumstances beyond their capacity to deal (See “Bernie“).
We give this move 4 out 5 Rigged Beauty Contests. (👑👑👑👑/5)
Movies With My Dad 