Jordan Morris is a writer and the co-host of the Jordan Jesse Go! podcast. This week he was complaining about how often people say to him “Hey, you look like Zach Galifianakis!” And he kinda does, not in a “you might get confused enough to ask him about working on Baskets” way, but in a “if they were casting a movie he could reasonably be picked as a Zach Galifianakis type” way.
Charming. That’s what this film is. Gentle, but strong. Charming without being precious. It’s not afraid to follow standard movie plots, but it knows how to push them into new spaces. I was worried when I saw the trailer that Tim Key’s stream of consciousness delivery would be grating, but he knows when to pull it back and let his eyes do the acting.
And the music holds up!
My first thought for a poster was a Wallace & Gromit redo (Wallis? Wallace? GOLLY I AM CLEVER), but I realized making a fake poster for a sweet movie based on the poster for a different set of sweet movies was redundant. I did get as far as a rough logo, though:
I mean, I even found the right font.
Then I went a different way, and picked a different movie about a very different island.
I teach digital media at a middle school, and my students make a not-quite-weekly show. I made this promo for our school’s video bulletin. Kids love Ed Wynn, right?
My students have raved about this movie for decades. Decades! I always thought “I’m sure it’s good, but I’m too old to enjoy it.”
It’s wonderful. I’m not sure how a movie that starts with almost twenty minutes of people moving into a house is so charming, but it was absolutely captivating. The animation works so well that I found myself thinking “that girl is really good; I wonder if she made other movies.” Not if the voice actor had done more work- if the animated girl had continued her acting career.
That’s two kid movies in a row that I watched and enjoyed after years of people saying “watch this – you’ll enjoy it.” Maybe it’s time to accept I should finally watch Paddington 2.
I think this would have worked better as a book, where they wouldn’t have been afraid to let Frida Kahlo’s art stand on its own. This documentary decided that nearly every image of her work had to be animated and color graded to match every other image, breaking the composition of everything she made. She complains at one point that a French artist wants to display her work with junk he bought in street markets in Mexico; I wonder how she would have felt about her work in this.
Someone pointed out that a movie called “Bitter Harvest” was actually made a few years ago. If you want your poster of imaginary movies to avoid having real counterparts, steal this version instead: