In The Attic (Jiri Barta, 2009): Czech Republic/Slovakia/Japan

Reviewed by Linda Ersbacken. At the Chinese Theater, at AFI Film Festival, Hollywood.

All I had knew about this film before I saw it was that it was stop action, and about toys. I imagined something like Toy Story. And if Toy Story was in Czech and with real puppets and stop action, it might have been.

The look of the film is like nothing I have seen before. The puppets, their “houses”, the evil characters, everything is very interesting to watch, because the director is so creative. In The Attic, is about a doll, who lives with a teddy bear, stick figure and a little lump of clay and they have a nice tradition of rolling a dice every morning to decide who’s birthday it is that day. They live in a big bag in the attic of a house, and they think their worst enemy is the attic cat, that lurks around. Little do they know there is another part of the attic called the land of evil, where an evil talking head has been spying on the doll, and decides to kidnap her.

The film follows the kidnapping and the doll getting lost, and then her friends, desperately trying to rescue her. The damsel in distress story has definitely been done before, and the story is familiar and predictable. However, the film is still so entertaining because the director really has some inventive and many creative ideas. As far as the story goes, I liked the border that was separating the the land of evil from the other side, the mouse living in the radio was also very entertaining. The puppets were familiar, but still looked very original. Especially the character of the evil guy, the talking head, which was a human head that didn’t move.

All the creative parts were so inventive that i definitely recommend watching it. My favorite part was when there was a storm and the pillows floated up, as well as the black plastic used as a black flood that was chasing the toys. Like Lisa Blondell mentioned in her review, I think the film is trying to incorporate famous stories, yet not copy, like Noah’s Arc which everyone understood, and made that audience laugh.

The film was, in my opinion more targeted towards adults, at least to appreciate the creative parts, while kids might appreciate the very simple story. Nowadays, many film makers are trying to make a new, cool, next best thing for the animated stories. This film is more “old school” which I appreciated, it proved that you can still be inventive and have new creative ideas based on older techniques.

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Published:
11.04.09 / 11am
Category:
AFI Filmfest 2009, Films