If it were up to me this would be called ‘The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window, Fell, and Was Never Heard From Again’ as this way we’d be out of the cinema in two minutes flat, no hard feelings. Alternatively, if The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared had actually disappeared, then I could have lived with that. But, no, the 100-year-old is in every frame, more or less, and this is a 100-year-old who will quickly get on your wick, just as the film itself will get on your wick. Based on the Swedish bestseller of the same name, by Jonas Jonasson, it’s a monotonous, one-note caper that will have you wishing: OK, so he doesn’t fall, but couldn’t he change his mind, and just climb back in?

Our hero is Allan Karlsson (Robert Gustafsson), a retired explosives expert who, tired of living in a nursing home, climbs out of the window on his 100th birthday, and effectively does a runner, even though it’s more of a shuffle. He shuffles to the bus station where, unwittingly, he steals a suitcase stuffed with drugs money from a skinhead biker, so has to go on the run (or on the shuffle, I suppose) from a criminal gang, as well as the police, while making friends along the way. These friends include a small-town old fella (Iwar Wiklander), who shares his love of vodka; a perpetual student, who seems incapable of completing a degree course (David Wiberg); and buxom, plucky Gunilla (Mia Skäringer), who has stolen an elephant (Sonja) from the circus. Sonja, in not mugging it up for the camera, provides the best, most naturalistic, most credible performance by far. And I just loved the way she used her bulk.

So there is Allan’s present-day adventure but, via flashbacks, we are also filled in on his life story, and his extraordinary knack for being in the right place at the right time; his knack for meeting global leaders (Franco, Truman, Stalin, Reagan) and for involving himself in global conflicts (the Spanish Civil War, the Cold War) and for finding himself incarcerated in a Soviet gulag, but not Auschwitz. I thought Auschwitz had to be coming but, thankfully, we were at least spared that.

Nothing seems particularly new. On the contrary, it seems a little bit Zelig and quite a bit Being There as well as quite a bit Forrest Gump, as much of the humour, such as it is, rests on the younger Allan not appreciating what is happening around him. Instead, he is cheery, passive, accepting and apolitical. ‘Life is what it is and will be what it will be,’ his mother had told him, just before he died, but it could just be he’s a thick goofball. He certainly gives that impression and, as a consequence, this lacks any satirical bite just as, it now occurs to me, it lacks anything to say about anything, including old age. If it weren’t for the demands of the back story, Allan could be any age, in fact. This is an empty romp, nothing more.

As directed by Felix Herngren, it plays the same slapstick elements over and over, and although there is a body count, as no one on screen is ever perturbed — oh, look, we’ve just killed someone; never mind — we aren’t perturbed either. Plus, there isn’t a single character to care about, not even Allan, who doesn’t appear to care about anyone else, and as Gustafsson is no Peter Sellers, he can’t bring anything extra to the role. (According to my bumf, Gustafsson is known as ‘the funniest man in Sweden’ so God help Swedish comedy, is all I can say.) He plays Allan at every age bar childhood and, during the middle portion, looks quite like Tim Brooke-Taylor at the height of The Goodies, which fails to add weight, obviously.

So, a film that is significantly less riotous or amusing or endearing than it thinks it is, and one that has outstayed its welcome long before the two hours of running time are up. Or should that be two hours of shuffling time? Felt like it.