A lonely old man finds his true love, a blowup doll, in a sex shop, only to lose her. But for lovers, there are sometimes happy endings.A lonely old man finds his true love, a blowup doll, in a sex shop, only to lose her. But for lovers, there are sometimes happy endings.A lonely old man finds his true love, a blowup doll, in a sex shop, only to lose her. But for lovers, there are sometimes happy endings.
- Directors
- Writer
- Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 2 nominations total
Featured reviews
A man with a moustache and beige mac wonders why even the caterpillars have a better sex life than he! It's just not fair so walking past a sex shop one afternoon, he decides to improvise and buy a blow-up lover. Now getting it up isn't as easy as he'd imagined so a bicycle pump is drafted in to help. Finally inflated (with helium by the looks of things) we enter into what looks like a bit of a spoof of the "Red Balloon" from 1956, and boy does this girl persist! Home, outdoors, work - he cannot shake her off! He can, however, lose his job and outrage the neighbours in the park when he takes her for a walk and into the path of some thugs who rather brutally solve his problem for him. Or do they actually just make matters worse? It's quite funny for a few minutes, this - it's an astonishing the array of people who have a doll of their own, and we can only marvel at what they get up to with them. A fetishist's wet dream and an ultimately dreamy denouement?
Actually this film is not entirely original, it is a parody based on the great French short film "Le Ballon Rouge" (The Red Balloon - 1956). Saw this tonight as part of a short film program at a The Chauvel Cinema in Sydney. Dream Doll was Oscar nominated in the Animation category. If anyone ever reads these reviews, I would strongly recommend you source both the films to make your own comparison. My preference is still far and away with the Le Ballon Rouge - this won the Grand Prize at Cannes and the Academy Award for Best Short Film in 1957. A good film to accompany Dream Doll is another Bob Godfrey Oscar nominated animated short film: Kama Sutra Rides Again. This was also on the program tonight.
This is truly one of the weirdest Oscar nominated films in history and I didn't believe it until I saw it! Considering that it was made in 1979 (a time when films had become very permissive and often tried to be shocking), it isn't super unusual to see a cartoon that is so jam-packed full of sex--after all, the Fritz the Cat films (the first X-rated full-length cartoons) had already appeared earlier in the decade. But what makes it so unusual is that it was actually nominated for such a prestigious award!!
The cartoon is a spoof, of sorts, of the French short, La Ballon Rouge (THE RED BALLOON) but instead of balloons, the film is about inflatable sex toys! And you don't see just one or two of these ready and willing inflatable girls--but dozens--making this a cartoon that is NOT proper entertainment for the kiddies! In addition to showing all these nude dolls, the film features a man trying to achieve intercourse with one and many other nasty items. All in all, it looks more like a short inspired by a Playboy Magazine cartoon. On this simple and smutty level, I guess it works---but this is certainly not mainstream entertainment or something that stands out for good reasons! I know I probably come off sounding like a real prude, but after all, who would find this all that entertaining? If you want a dirty film, there are certainly more stimulating ones and if you want to watch a cartoon, then there are hundreds that are simply better.
The cartoon is a spoof, of sorts, of the French short, La Ballon Rouge (THE RED BALLOON) but instead of balloons, the film is about inflatable sex toys! And you don't see just one or two of these ready and willing inflatable girls--but dozens--making this a cartoon that is NOT proper entertainment for the kiddies! In addition to showing all these nude dolls, the film features a man trying to achieve intercourse with one and many other nasty items. All in all, it looks more like a short inspired by a Playboy Magazine cartoon. On this simple and smutty level, I guess it works---but this is certainly not mainstream entertainment or something that stands out for good reasons! I know I probably come off sounding like a real prude, but after all, who would find this all that entertaining? If you want a dirty film, there are certainly more stimulating ones and if you want to watch a cartoon, then there are hundreds that are simply better.
Did you know
- ConnectionsFeatured in Sneak Previews: Oscar Special 1980 (1980)
Details
- Runtime
- 12m
- Color
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