Watch The Inventor Crazybrains and His Wonderful Airship For Free

Too much of everything

Did you people see the same film I saw?

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

This short from Georges Méliès is an interesting mix of surrealism and science fiction. It begins with a professor (The Inventor Crazybrains, played by Méliès) in his workshop where he dances in excitement over his new plans of an airship. He goes to sleep and dreams these two clownish creatures enter his workshop, wreck his plans and make a huge mess. He then sees the airship he's planning to invent take flight, with beautiful girls appearing in it and flying away. This element makes no sense and is kind of just thrown in. A fireball hits it and makes it explode, and the inventor awakes in his laboratory only to lose his marbles.The color tinting (which appears to be stencil-color) looks excellent for a movie of the time, especially the explosions. As for the plot, it doesn't really go anywhere but that's okay since the visuals more or less keep your interest. I'm not sure why the inventor goes crazy either and the whole thing makes little sense. Then again, most dreams are that way. At only three minutes it's fun while it lasts and at least has a little bit of a plot, unlike other Méliès films around the same time.

An old professor has an idea for an airship. He has all the diagrams and documents with plans to achieve his project. However, when he falls asleep, imps come in and mess things up. In his dream when he tries to realize his plan, everything falls apart; as a matter of fact, it explodes. One big problem is all the unrelated junk that occurs just to show it off.

This is obviously a vague statement given this was still made almost 110 years ago. It's a black-and-white film that runs for roughly 2.5 minutes and has quite a few supernatural elements like people floating in space. But technical aspects were also present here with a zeppelin depicted. The star here was not Méliès himself anymore like in his earlier works, but the story. However, the story is not really too interesting I must say. I did not think this was among the director's best works and I do not encourage anybody to start with this one if you want to take a look into Meliès' filmography. But probably almost nobody will as this is one of his lesser known works. All in all, not a great watch. thumbs down.

Le dirigeable fantastique (1906) ** 1/2 (out of 4) aka The Inventor Crazybrains and His Wonderful Airship More style than actual substance is what this Georges Melies film actually is. In the film Melies plays the title character who goes to bed and dreams that his airship actually takes flight. There's really not too much that happens in the three-minute running time, although I will admit that we get a pretty fun ending that includes some great fire effects, which are used perfectly with the red tinting used to show them off. Many of Melies films would have various objects taking off flying and we'd go on an adventure with them but that doesn't happen here. The airship takes off and that's pretty much it as it really never goes anywhere and we don't get to see any real action until the end of the picture. One thing that I did like were the actual effects that are taking place behind where Crazybones is sleeping. The way that they play out gives the film a 3-D like effect and I thought they were quite good.