Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Off Track’ on Netflix, a Lightweight Dramedy Backdropped by Sweden’s Famous Vasaloppet Ski Race (2024)

The backdrop to Swedish dramedy Off Track (now on Netflix) is Vasaloppet, an annual 90-kilometer (56-mile) cross-country ski race that takes place a little ways thattaway from Stockholm. The event draws 15,000 participants – if you’re an Americain like me and need a contextual marker, the Boston Marathon attracts 30,000 – who finish the trek in as few as four and as many as 12 hours. It began 100 years ago and leads all the way up to this story about a struggling divorcee and her struggling brother who partake in the Vasaloppet so it may function as a metaphor for their various and sundry struggles – you know, life is a marathon and not a sprint, stuff like that. Now let’s see if the conceit works enough to make us feel invested in their well-being.

OFF TRACK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Daniel (Fredrik Hallgren) desperately needs more snow, so he steals a snowman head and smashes it on the pavement so he has a track to cross-country ski on. He must have piles of money, because his house is enormous and modern. He and his wife Klara (Rakel Warmlander) have been trying to get pregnant for years; they’re at an age where achieving parenthood is increasingly difficult, and they’re doing the in-vitro fertilization thing. But he’s so focused on working out and training for Vasaloppet, he almost misses the fertilization appointment. Actually, he totally misses it, but knows what has to be done, so he meanders from the ski path, finds a quiet spot behind a rock, deposits a fresh-brewed sem*n specimen in a cup, and pays a cab driver (Leif Andree) to deliver it to Klara at the doctor’s office. What kind of person does this make him? I’m afraid to judge.

Meanwhile, his sister Lisa (Katia Winter) hits rock-bottom. We meet her in the bar, totally plowed and getting tossed to the curb by security. She wakes up in jail – whoops – and now she’s late for her daughter’s Christmas recital. Before we get any further, we must note that the cop (Ulf Stenberg) who informs her that she was found asleep in a park is subject to a couple scenes establishing him as a character, perhaps one who Lisa might encounter later. Anyway, her life is cruddy, but not so cruddy that it can’t get worse: She’s been struggling with depression, she’s been unemployed for years, her ex and his new wife are getting fed up, social services is reconsidering her custody status and then her washing machine goes kaflooey, flooding her apartment. When it rains, it pours and fills up to the ceiling and tries to drown you, y’know?

So Lisa ends up moving in with Daniel and Klara for a while. She walks in and drops her boots on their pristine and glistening floor and announces that it could take three months for her place to be livable again. Deep sighs all around. She glugs down one of Klara’s $500 bottles of wine without realizing it’s a $500 bottle of wine. Daniel suggests she find something to do – like go skiing with him. First time she loses an edge and takes out a little girl on a slight slope, she’s ready to quit, but the desire to impress her daughter and Daniel’s urging prompts her to commit to Vasaloppet. Seems improbable, but who would discourage her from setting a goal and busting butt to reach it? Then we get a training montage – trying hard now? Trying hard now, definitely – and some scenes in which Daniel and Klara’s marital conflict comes to a head. Good thing Daniel and Lisa have a metaphor to tackle in the third act!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I dunno, what else has that middling winter-sports thing going for it? Mystery, Alaska? Cool Runnings? Eddie the Eagle? Yes – Eddie the Eagle. Off Track reminds me of Eddie the Eagle.

Performance Worth Watching: Winter reminds me of Emily Blunt and Hallgren brings to mind, um, Rob Corddry? So Winter wins this one, giving her character a little more oomph and complexity than the rest of the cast.

Memorable Dialogue: The sperm-delivery cab driver returns to the plot to highlight, bold, underline and italicize the movie’s main idea: “Life isn’t a straight path. There are ups and downs. The whole nine yards. Just like the Vasaloppet!”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Off Track is nice! It’s nice. Nice! It’s tough to muster much more enthusiasm for this brand of lowish-stakes, occasionally funny, somewhat dramatic story, which touches on a few issues middle-aged adults face – parenthood or lack thereof, marital stress, mental health, lack of life direction – but doesn’t dive too deeply into them. Maybe up to the knee or mid-thigh. Too much deeper, and the film might lose its light-but-not-featherweight tone, and really truly actually be about things and stir up some poignancy and substantial emotion. It could be funnier, which would better justify its laid-back approach.

Which isn’t to say this is a waste of time. It’s pleasant and the characters are relatable, in the sense that they’re rendered bland so viewers might recognize a bit of themselves here and there, in a general sort of way – you know, hey, I’m about 40 and life can be tough sometimes. It throws in a little light romance and some spousal discord, but nobody’s going to mistake it for Casablanca or Bergman. It also sticks heavily to the Law of Economy of Characters, which states that movies don’t just drop characters into the plot willy-nilly, and that they must inevitably have a purpose – thus, the nice cop and the nice cab driver, who turn up in the third act to do nice things for the nice principal characters. Nice movie. Nice! And nothing more.

Our Call: Off Track is consistently fine, watchable and well-intentioned in a fairly noncommittal comedio-dramatic way. So STREAM IT, but keep your expectations in check.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.