The Club of the Laid Off

In keeping with the common style of Czech stop motion animation, "Klub odložených" ("The Club of the Laid Off" in English) has inanimate objects doing a series of weird things. In this case, the objects are mannequins. A bunch of old discarded ones spend their days traipsing around a Prague apartment, but some people dump a bunch of new discarded mannequins in the apartment. How are the two sets of mannequins supposed to get along? Since this is only the second Jiří Barta movie that I've seen, it's not fair to judge it against his entire repertoire; I did like "A Ballad about Green Wood" better, but this one's still OK. Nothing special, but certainly creative.

To some, the stop-motion films of Czech artists Jan Svankmajer and Jirí Barta (a bit later) are absolutely adored. I have now seen about eight or ten and frankly, I've seen enough as after a while they become repetitive. All the films I've seen of theirs involved discarded things and bits and knickknacks all being animated--and usually in very bizarre and disarming situations. It might be okay to see a few, but after a while most people will no doubt tire of them.

Well, this film is no different. It consists of a beat up looking flat where it is inhabited by a variety of very old fashioned mannequins. All of them are animated using stop-motion and their behaviors, not surprisingly, are bizarre and disturbing. Later, a group of newer mannequins are brought in by real people and the two groups (old and new) fight it out amongst themselves after the people leave.

While I must admit that the animation style is impressive and took a lot of work, after a while I was left thinking "so what?". Sure, I am seeing a lot of trash move about and gyrate but none of it makes any sense. And, I quickly tired of it.

My advice is to try watching a few films like this...then stop!! Unless you are strangely fixed on this style, try Svankmeyer's JABBERWOCKY (which bears no resemblance to the Lewis Carroll poem) and perhaps ALICE (a VERY twisted and highly disturbing retelling of "Alice in Wonderland") and then stop. Give your poor brain a rest!!

By the way, this strange short can be found in a DVD collection entitled "Cartoon Noir". It's a collection of strange avant garde films that really have nothing to do with Film Noir and would probably not be appreciated by most viewers.