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Such a frustrating disappointment

Good movie but grossly overrated

Admirable film.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

To those who won't go near World cinema and can't even be talked into giving it a try, Little Otik will (justifiably, maybe) bolster their viewpoint with the oft conceived negative aspects they see some world cinema to have with many elements contained within this part-animated, Czech horror/comedy/drama. It's incoherently weird. A sassy young Czech girl, our protagonist has long blonde ponytails and talks a lot. She has typically Czech parents (or as stereotypes would have us believe); father drinks a lot and watches TV, mother makes vegetable soup with few vegetables - and other various pureed concoctions - all in close up. They live in the next apartment to a young barren couple. Otik, a tree stump, is dug up by the husband and given to comfort his distraught wife, after they return with the bad news from the fertility clinic. This lump of wood has knots and twigs sprouting where male human bodily parts are situated and look rather obviously so. We are left in no doubt as to which parts are what. 'Little' Otik immediately becomes surrogate son to the mother as she takes to it as her very own.One of the most creepy things I've seen, ever, is the animated wooden mouth - and moving 'wooden' lips of this log, suckling on the lovely, womanly breast of its 'mother' as it feeds. Superbly done. She beams, besotted, across to her husband - a perplexed and rather nerdy looking office clerk.To cut a long story short (this is one LONG movie, especially if it's viewed on a commercial TV station - with advert breaks it runs to over 2.5 hours) Otik grows into a giant meat-eating freak, cuckoo-like in its ever open greed for more. First the dog gets 'it', (or was it the cat?) then the janitor, who lusted after the young girl with the pony-tails and soon Otik finds the not particularly welcomed, but plump social worker, come to check up on the "baby" pretty tasty, too! And whatever happened to the postman? The couple themselves, the family in the next apartment, the young girl especially, all try to cover up the ever more ridiculous scenarios, each becoming ever more hilarious. Whenever we see Otik other than a when in his log-like state, he is animated, which means he springs to life, stop-go and superimposed imagery transforming, he changes quickly, often violently, at times crudely and at others skilfully. Reminding me of the Hungarian movie 'Hukkle' (Hiccup), where the basic needs and functions surrounding birth, food and death seem to be under intense scrutiny, Little Otik both celebrates and deplores these themes. Drawn from folklore and even a fairytale, the story triumphs and decries them. Taints of Polanski's Rosemary's Baby creep through; that distaste, that intense sense of wrongness.As to the best in East European cinema bit; well, it's unique, for one. Individual, as in that it genuinely produces something far more scary than bumps in the night and big flashes of thunder. Because it relates to our very base human instincts. It is also at times outrageously funny. I've seen this brilliant, yet weirdly bad film twice - about the number of times its been on UK TV that I'm aware of. One could score it anything from 1 point, to ten; with full justification. Go for it if you feel you could be up for it, but if you're not sure about the whole world cinema scene, steer clear. I wouldn't want this oddity to influence you badly against some of the best cinema going.

I did not know going into Little Otik that it was based on a real fairy tale. As it went along it became more than evident that it was, but the director, Jan Svankmajer, the inspired nut of eastern European animation, worked in the 'fairy tale' aspect in a truly unconventional manner. For a while, for the unsuspecting viewer, it seems like an original story, if one that has some obvious and not so obvious comparisons (one of them for me was the obscure Lynch short The Grandmother, but Eraserhead also seems a tad comparable, and then a bit of A.I. thrown in- these are all shallow observations).There's a husband and wife who want kids- the woman does, anyway- and he feels bad that they can't procreate. The man sees a little girl that lives in the same apartment building with a fake baby doll. He gets an idea - he goes to a tree stump, pulls it out, carves it, and presents it to his wife (as a joke) as a baby looking like the doll with full anatomical correctness. She takes it completely seriously to heart, like a totally insane person, and the husband goes along with this charade. It seems like it should be unbelievable story-wise, but it works a lot better than it would because of the humor involved, some of it just weird (the pillows the "mother" uses to mark by each month), and some just really, truly funny (some of the performances, all on the same wavelength Svankmajer wants, mostly by the crazy, child-loving mother).It's when the tree stump is "born"- as if the real baby of the couple has been born, but at the same time is never seen- that things turn into the form of a horror movie and a fairy tale. One might be tempted to say it's like a Czech nightmare trip of Little Shop of Horrors, which may be somewhat accurate for the simple physical act of eating (tree stump's gotta eat, especially human meat). However, the style that one who's seem Svankmajer's work, plus the skillful work of the stop motion animation that springs some surprises even AFTER it starts to spring its contortions and wonderful movements (i.e. the eyeball looking out of the mouth), is in peak form. The story is not as cluttered as Faust, there's lots of awkward domestic humor, and some that are like bizarre running gags (the old pedophile, the obsession with disgusting looking soup in full close-ups, the gardening hoes, the animated storybook, etc).At the same time as Svankmajer has all this going on, there is an actually interesting performance from the little girl who lives with her parents but is lonely and looks upon Otik as a threat that needs to be protected from the bloody climax that's at the critter's fate. And, in-between the nightmarish quality of the subject matter, Svankmajer has an intention, as del-Toro had with Pan's Labyrinth, to make a contemporary mix of fairy tale and adult drama with a pure sense of the horrors capable in family. It's rough-edged and deranged, it's full of unique camera and editing tricks that stay consistent, it delivers more shocks with food (as mentioned) than I've ever seen, and there's even a level of tragedy reached through the urban horror of the story. Only the very end, which feels like it kind of cuts off things, is a little disappointing, but this can be forgiven for the strength of the vision at hand. Anyone wanting a risk with their film-viewing, seek this out ASAP.

Anti-spoiler warning: Do _not_ see the film's trailer, it spoils the film dreadfully. And this is one film which you don't want spoilt.This is a long film, in places utterly absorbing, in others quite shocking, in many places extremely funny, but alas rather predictable and a little repetitive too. On the whole quite a work of art. And oh so Czech too, which is nothing but a complement, in particular for the brilliantly executed and highly amusing animation of Otesánek.There are almost no weak roles, or weakly acted roles, and no matter how crazy people's actions or decisions might be, they all seem to be quite in character. In particular look for excellent performances from Veronika Zilková as the "mother" Bozena, struck with a terminal case of wannabe-breeder rabies. The change in the interplay between the young girl Alzbetka and the very old Mr. Zlabek is superbly done - both having their time as the creepy one, and both as the innocent one.This was going to get an extremely high score (and I tend to vote low on the whole), until the ending appeared, and went. I thought it cheapened the film slightly, but I still gave it a pretty good score nonetheless.

The worldview that drives this movie is the notion that you cannot escape the stories of the past. Ruiz makes movies with this point, especially one I saw recently, "Geneologies." In this view, the teller doesn't capture a story, it is the other way around. There are only so many stories, and when one captures you, it will engulf you, only to be possibly bested by a stronger one.That's the story within this little movie, done well enough for TeeVee, I suppose. But it is also the story about why this and all Czech cinema is so defeatist. Yes, I know the Czech republic is a tiny nation, so we shouldn't expect much. But compared say, to New Zealand, the contrast in imagination is striking. Sure, they were bludgeoned by successively thuggish occupiers, but look at Polish cinema. Some are truly lyrical and life-altering things, no? What's happened with this movie: it has been captured by the larger Czech arc of defeat. That larger arc drives this and completely overtakes the best efforts of Svankmeir, who in a few earlier projects really seemed to have some promise as a visual artist if not a long form storyteller.The movie's story, since you likely won't see it, is of a couple who out of emotional need take a piece of yard waste as an infant, and he grows too big for his situation, eating everything he encounters. Meanwhile, a little girl in the same building follows that larger story by reading the "original" in a children's book. So she knows the score, and how it will end.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.