My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117

Being something of an aspiring filmmaker myself, I thought I was in for a treat when I took home "My Wrongs..." (according to the deliberately vague DVD cover, I had purchased "a short film including scenes"). I should have known better really, and avoided this insipid (and often offensive) piece of twoddle.

The scene in the church is repulsive to watch (especially for those familiar with Morris's warped attitude towards paedophilia from his notorious TV series, Brass Eye) and serves no purpose other than to shock. How this film is labelled a comedy I will never understand.

The runner's commentary sounds like a novel idea in principle (having worked as a runner myself, it's often an interesting and uninhibited perspective on the filmmaking industry), however this is sadly not the case here. Instead, we are treated to some public schoolboy ranting about dogs on film, before concluding that there are no really great movies starring dogs. This is all very interesting, but not worth a single frame of celluloid.

To say that this film goes nowhere would be an understatement. It relies far too heavily upon its heightened style, at the expense of plot, character and dialogue, leaving the viewer strangely perturbed and unfulfilled. Its over-simplified message - that man should take responsibility for his actions - is both glaringly obvious and poorly illustrated.

The film does have its moments of pseudo-Kafkaesque surrealism, but ultimately, it fails to convince, to entertain, to enlighten and just ends up being irritating. If you want to see a really great piece of short filmmaking, I strongly recommend "Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life", by Peter Capaldi.

If Jam suddenly squatted down and did a massive turd My Wrongs would be the result.

Awful awful piece of film. It just had NO reason to exist. No story, no characterisation and most importantly no jokes. Paddy Considine is normally a great actor but he just wasn't on form here. Morrises voice talents were wasted. The only ray of hope was a brief (and wasted) vocal cameo from Phil Cornwell.

This was billed as comedy but it was just completely devoid of ANY humour. Go on My Wrong fans, tell me your favourite moment?

This from the man who brought us Brass Eye.

I suppose some of the other reviewers here may think I am a really sick person, but I thought this was hilarious! Prior to this viewing, I had never heard of Chris Morris, probably because I live on the other side of the Pond, but I will seek out more.

I won't recap the content because others have already done so on this forum. My reactions to this material are quite different from others' reactions, however, and I encourage the reader to take a chance and see what their own reactions will be.

As a clinical social worker who has worked extensively with the chronic mentally ill, I was not offended by the portrayal of an obviously deranged person. Persons experiencing psychotic episodes involving command hallucinations, whether aural or visual, are human, and the content and logic of their experience, while bizarre, is recognizably human. You may recall something you once believed and later found to be false or inaccurate in some way. To the extent that this belief influenced your decisions at that time, you were sharing the same mechanism that causes a psychotic person to believe a dog is speaking to them or the television is blinking in some mysterious way that may or may not be revealing something important. The difference is in degree and, possibly, in the lack or over-abundance of certain brain chemicals.

I give this a 9/10.

From Chris Morris, who would later go on to direct the acclaimed comedy on terror 'Four Lions', this short film is...something else. It definitely isn't perfect, but it is so weird and depressing and scary and hilarious that I cannot help but totally embrace everything about it w/great enthusiasm. When I really think about it, this is among the most sad and deranged short films I have seen in quite some time, but it is also one of the funniest, and this mixture of humor, horror, and tragedy is really what makes this a mad masterpiece of surreal pitch-black comedy. It is bleak and sick and so so so so so so dark and I love it!

This is the debut film from satirist, surrealist comedian and cult phenomenon Chris Morris, whose fans have levelled criticism at the project as it is a reinterpretation of a story already featured in his dark, late-night sketch show 'Blue Jam'.

As a Morris fan myself, I was somewhat sceptical about the need for a retelling of this tale - a blackly comic piece about a man who is so depressed that he believes his dog is talking to him, and providing some frankly terrible advice.

So I'm happy to report that the film is indeed successful, at least for the most part, and this is largely due to Morris's skill as a filmmaker. The tone is stylish and experimental, and manages to breath new life into the story - Morris has clearly built upon what he started in his last TV series, 'Jam'. And as well as directing the film, Morris has also written the electro-ambient soundtrack, which interplays cleverly with the camerawork to create some neat moments.

However, some of the gags don't translate to the screen particularly well - and this is largely because cinema isn't the best medium to convey the protagonist's reasoning behind his erratic behaviour - described so effectively in the radio version. Therefore, if you plan to watch this film, I'd highly recommend listening to the original Blue Jam monologue on which it is based (included on the DVD now available), which provides some of the detail and il(logic) behind the character's actions.

Maybe next time then, a new story tailor-made for the screen would be more satisfying, but this is still an accomplished debut.

9/10