Otesánek

I had the good fortune to see this at a special showing in Washington introduced by the director. I just wanted to say that I found it fascinating, very funny, and pretty unnerving at moments. Friends of mine had recommended Svankmajer's animated works, which I have yet to see and hopefully will be able to track down and watch.

I love the visual effects-- they don't have the polished look of digitized Hollywood extravaganzas, but they have a curious, unruly life to them which I found infinitely more interesting. This is a sharp, funny, likeable yet disturbing folktale on film, and I strongly recommend those with a taste for the unusual seeking it out.

Perhaps Jan Svankmajer is sick of the medium of stop-motion animation which first made him famous. Perhaps he's trying to move into pure filmmaking. And perhaps I shouldn't criticize him for that. He's actually an excellent live-action director as well, which Little Otik (in Czech "Otesanek," "Greedy Guts," the name of an Eastern European fairy tale from which the script is adapted) demonstrates. But I'm not sure he wants to leave stop-motion animation behind. It seems to me more like he wants to use it more often in the film, but he didn't have the money. If you're interested in Svankmajer's work, start with his short stop-motion films, then move to Alice, his version of Alice in Wonderland, and then move to this film and then Faust.

As for the film itself, it's imperfect. Its biggest problem is that it's overlong. There's really not enough meat in it (well, there's enough meat literally). It can move slowly, especially nearer the beginning. Also, the ending is a bit abrupt. Still, there're a lot of great scenes and set pieces. It can also be very funny. It's certainly the most humorous side of Jan Svankmajer that I've seen. 8/10.

This movie was very, very disturbing. I can't help but noting that I would never voluntarily see this movie again, and even that I wish I hadn't seen it the first time.

On the other hand, I am forced to admit that it was a very good movie. The fertility imagery was a little TOO heavy-handed for my liking; I felt like shrieking "OKAY, I GET IT ALREADY!!!" about twenty minutes into the movie. But I suppose it all related to the theme, so it was okay.

The Otik-creature is also very disturbing, but the food scenes are probably the worst. I remember the food from my stay in St. Petersburg, and this movie was fairly accurate. Don't see it if you've recently eaten, or plan to eat at any time in the future. Ugh!

I think the movie would be classified as a dark comedy if it were American. As such it was extremely funny; the dialogue is quite witty and the acting is good. But the whole thing was just... disturbing.

Beware of violence; there are a few very bloody, graphic scenes. The nudity is nonsexual, so it's really not a problem even for prudish Americans like me.

I liked this film very much. As with most comedy/horror films, the plot is fairly absurd. An infertile couple is desperate for a child. When the husband digs up a tree root vaguely resembling a child the woman loves it so much that it comes to life, and life begins to imitate a frightening fairly tale. It gets pretty slow towards the end, and would have been an even better film had it been about 25 minutes shorter. But, the film is great fun to watch, especially the performance of the woman playing Little Otik's mother, who is just insanely funny in the protection of her "son".

It's certainly not the best of it's kind, but it is a hilarious, twisted nightmare of a tale that fans of the genre will likely enjoy.

I knew I had to see this movie when I saw a picture of Little Otik, the misshapen cannibal log baby! I expected it to be an strange romp through fairy tales and stop motion, similar to Svankmeyer's other movies like ALICE and FAUST [which i love]. And it was... only LITTLE OTIK was a little less zany, was more plot-driven, and had fewer stop motion sequences. So I didn't like it was much as FAUST, but it was still pretty awesome.

Other reviews can fill you in on the plot if you really need to hear about it, but basically a childless couple "gives birth" to a piece of wood shaped like a baby. The wood baby comes alive...and really, REALLY likes to eat.

LITTLE OTIK's tone is humorously dreary, in an understated way. I especially appreciated the kitchen table scenes where the mother forces her family to eat nasty soup. I lived in provincial Russia for four months and flashed back to my own times around the table, facing a bowl of mush with bones in it... YUM! Jan Svankmeyer really loves to accentuate slurping and belching noises, too. These are some of the most disgusting meal scenes I have ever seen in a movie.

While this movie has more dialogue than a typical Svankmeyer film, much of the story is still told through pictures rather than words. I found a lot of the pregnancy imagery to be pretty well-done, like the juxtaposition of pictures from the little girl's sex-ed book with footage of the father cutting down the tree which will become Otik. You don't realize the significance of that montage until after Otik is born, then it all makes sense.

There are a few negative sides to the movie. For instance, I wasn't such a big fan of the parts where the girl reads the fairy tale out loud we see pictures of it. A similar device worked in Alice but was kind of needless here, since no one watching the movie would really need the plot spelled out for them, at least not in such detail. I mean, all we need to know is that there's a legend, that the girl is familiar with it, and that the cabbage patch will play a big part in the story. Now, if the folk tale had been shown in stop motion, I would have loved it!!

Also, I got a little weary of the constant close ups, especially of peoples' mouths. And as others have noted, the movie ran about 20 minutes too long. Probably some of the pregnancy footage in the first act could have been edited.

Overall my criticisms are few! I'm glad I saw this movie and would definitely recommend it to other Svankmeyer fans!!