Rhapsodies

I mostly based this week’s selection on my first pic, which I thought would be an interesting indie piece, and based on what I had heard about was an indie companion to films like Cool World and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Regrettably, I had seen both of those films and I had to match my first pic, Who Wants to Kill Jesse? With something… So I went with Czech Comedies

Who Wants to Kill Jessie, directed by Jesse tells the story of Rose, a researcher who is perfecting a way to cure people of bad dreams (so they can be better workers) What she doesn’t realize is while her process removes dreams from people’s minds, it manifests them in the real world. Meanwhile her husband, Harry is working on “anti-gravitational gloves” inspired by a comic called Who Wants to Kill Jessie? Starring a gorgeous mad scientist who is chased by a cowboy and a super hero who is trying to steal her gloves.

Rose injects Harry with her formula, to stop him from dreaming about women who are not her bringing Jessie and her two pursuers into the real world… Hilarity ensues.

This was not what I expected. Because most of the Czech films I had seen in the past I was expecting something avant-garde with animated figures done in an underground style interacting with the real world.

Instead, this was mostly silly though not in a bad way. It was mostly slapstick with usual cliches like henpecked husbands. The “cartoon characters’ were real actors who speak in word balloons, which actually worked well in a surreal kind of way.

The second film on my list, Up and Down, tells about two criminals smuggling illegal immigrants into the country. When dropping off their last batch, during some confusion a baby is left behind. They sell the child to an illegal adoption center, eventually falling into the hands of a desperate couple.

Meanwhile, a college professor finds he has a brain tumor that must be operated on. He wants to make amends with his estranged son who is living in Australia.

They said this movie was a comedy and while I didn’t have a problem with it but beyond the fanaticism of two football hooligans, I failed to find any humor in it. Perhaps it was a cultural thing. The multiple stories didn’t really have much to do with each other. Still, all the bits were interesting even if they didn’t seem to connect.

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