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So much average

An Exercise In Nonsense

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This cartoon of the Ionescu play is sometimes very funny. I don't think it sticks too closely to the original, which I can barely recall from fifty years ago, although I do remember seeing Joan Plowright, probably mistakenly.I suppose it's impossible to squeeze the absurd play into a ten-minute cartoon, but this film is enjoyable in its own right. I don't think it raises the same questions about conformity. How could it? However, it parodies so many elements of high culture that I laughed out loud. There's a conductor trying to guide the orchestra through a manic version of the William Tell Overture, only the audience keeps falling asleep and he must pop a balloon now and again to keep them awake. A terrible soprano sings a sappy song and the heavy black curtain abruptly plops down and shuts her off.Two men sit in a cafe, one drunk, the other an "intellectual" who spouts all these high-blown names before stomping out. (I think that scene, at least, is derived from the play.) A secretary who ignores the demands of a ringing phone while she applies make up to her face -- at first a complete blank, then gradually filled in with eyebrow pencil and lipstick.There is no dialog to speak of. The music sounds as if a percussionist had gone mad. The images are all crudely drawn, as if with a laundry marker. It's pretty funny. I wish I'd been able to show it to my kid when he was about twelve. He'd have enjoyed it too.