User reviews

I had the good fortune to see this at a special showing in Washington introduced by the director. I just wanted to say that I found it fascinating, very funny, and pretty unnerving at moments. Friends of mine had recommended Svankmajer's animated works, which I have yet to see and hopefully will be able to track down and watch.

I love the visual effects-- they don't have the polished look of digitized Hollywood extravaganzas, but they have a curious, unruly life to them which I found infinitely more interesting. This is a sharp, funny, likeable yet disturbing folktale on film, and I strongly recommend those with a taste for the unusual seeking it out.

Perhaps Jan Svankmajer is sick of the medium of stop-motion animation which first made him famous. Perhaps he's trying to move into pure filmmaking. And perhaps I shouldn't criticize him for that. He's actually an excellent live-action director as well, which Little Otik (in Czech "Otesanek," "Greedy Guts," the name of an Eastern European fairy tale from which the script is adapted) demonstrates. But I'm not sure he wants to leave stop-motion animation behind. It seems to me more like he wants to use it more often in the film, but he didn't have the money. If you're interested in Svankmajer's work, start with his short stop-motion films, then move to Alice, his version of Alice in Wonderland, and then move to this film and then Faust.

As for the film itself, it's imperfect. Its biggest problem is that it's overlong. There's really not enough meat in it (well, there's enough meat literally). It can move slowly, especially nearer the beginning. Also, the ending is a bit abrupt. Still, there're a lot of great scenes and set pieces. It can also be very funny. It's certainly the most humorous side of Jan Svankmajer that I've seen. 8/10.

The film is based on Czech fairy tale "Otesánek" ("Greedy Guts"). It is a story of a loving but childless couple, Karel and Bozena whose biggest dream is to have a baby. To make his wife smile, Karel digs up a tree root and carves it to look like a human baby. So overwhelming is Bozena's wish to become a mother that by its power, the stump transforms into a living creature with enormous appetites. Very soon, the baby formula and carrot soup are not enough to feet the little monster and mysteriously, people begin to disappear.

"Little Otik" is similar to Svankmajer's earlier feature movies "Alice" and "Faust" but it is more plot-driven, has fewer stop-motion animation sequences that would not even begin until 40 or so minutes into the film. Another problem that has been noted by almost every viewer is that the movie is slightly (126 minutes) overlong and it drags a little toward the end. As excellent as Svankmajer is a live-action director, what makes him unique is the groundbreaking combination of both live-action and darkly-humorous, visceral, and surreal animation and I wanted to see more of it. Still, "Little Otik" is highly original, funny, dark, and sinister with first rate acting from live actors and many great scenes and effects. Young Kristina Adamcová is especially good as Alzbetka, Karel's and Bozena's next door neighbor, precocious and very observant girl. I highly recommend "Little Otik" but I believe that the best introductions to Svankmajer are his short stop-motion and clay-motion films. The DVD includes the B/W 12 minutes long early film "Flat" (1969) - this is Svankmajer in his nightmarish best. We are in the claustrophobic apartment with the film protagonist where every object is an enemy and predator. Pay attention to the ending -"Abandon hope all ye who enter here".

7.5/10

I had seen other films by Jan Svankmajer, so I had high expectations when I went to see this latest release. I was not disappointed. This is possibly Svankmajers most accessible feature film, as it follows a simple linear narrative on a parallel to a fairytale discovered by one character.

The film follows a couple who are unable to have children. Whilst in the woods one day, The man pulls up a tree stump which faintly resembles a baby. In jest, he gives this to his missus who, in her desperation, believes it is a real child. After a few exasperated protests from the skeptical father, she takes it home with her and the couple goes to great lengths to conceal the young root baby from the prying eyes of the neighbours. The child becomes difficult to hide as its appetite grows and, following the rules of the fairytale, it develops a taste for human flesh.

Despite the grim subject matter, the film remains fairly light hearted. There is some well-appreciated humour from the all-too-accurate characters, and despite the films length, I was not reduced to clock-watching. Svankmajers trademark stop-motion was sparce, but had all the more effect when it was used.

Svankmajer has used the mediums of film and animation to question the possibilities and blurs the line between fable and reality. This would not be credible, were it not for the accurate and witty insights into modern living and the characters it breeds. As it was, I found myself constantly questioning whether, maybe, perhaps, there's the slimmest of chances that the stuff of fairytales is. real.

I urge you to see it. Its f***ing brilliant.

I knew I had to see this movie when I saw a picture of Little Otik, the misshapen cannibal log baby! I expected it to be an strange romp through fairy tales and stop motion, similar to Svankmeyer's other movies like ALICE and FAUST [which i love]. And it was... only LITTLE OTIK was a little less zany, was more plot-driven, and had fewer stop motion sequences. So I didn't like it was much as FAUST, but it was still pretty awesome.

Other reviews can fill you in on the plot if you really need to hear about it, but basically a childless couple "gives birth" to a piece of wood shaped like a baby. The wood baby comes alive...and really, REALLY likes to eat.

LITTLE OTIK's tone is humorously dreary, in an understated way. I especially appreciated the kitchen table scenes where the mother forces her family to eat nasty soup. I lived in provincial Russia for four months and flashed back to my own times around the table, facing a bowl of mush with bones in it... YUM! Jan Svankmeyer really loves to accentuate slurping and belching noises, too. These are some of the most disgusting meal scenes I have ever seen in a movie.

While this movie has more dialogue than a typical Svankmeyer film, much of the story is still told through pictures rather than words. I found a lot of the pregnancy imagery to be pretty well-done, like the juxtaposition of pictures from the little girl's sex-ed book with footage of the father cutting down the tree which will become Otik. You don't realize the significance of that montage until after Otik is born, then it all makes sense.

There are a few negative sides to the movie. For instance, I wasn't such a big fan of the parts where the girl reads the fairy tale out loud we see pictures of it. A similar device worked in Alice but was kind of needless here, since no one watching the movie would really need the plot spelled out for them, at least not in such detail. I mean, all we need to know is that there's a legend, that the girl is familiar with it, and that the cabbage patch will play a big part in the story. Now, if the folk tale had been shown in stop motion, I would have loved it!!

Also, I got a little weary of the constant close ups, especially of peoples' mouths. And as others have noted, the movie ran about 20 minutes too long. Probably some of the pregnancy footage in the first act could have been edited.

Overall my criticisms are few! I'm glad I saw this movie and would definitely recommend it to other Svankmeyer fans!!

I had never heard of Jan Svankmajer before seeing this, after recording it at 3o'clock in the morning on channel four, and i certainly wasn't dissapointed. This film, as like the rest of Svankmajer's work is truly original and unique. It's a must see for anyone who's a fan of the surreal. The stop motion animation of the disturbing stump baby is incredible. A number of Svankmajer's work, including this and Faust, are retelling of old czech fairy tales, and the films really capture the atmosphere of the great capital Prague.

Also see faust and alice, also by Svankmajer, both are equally as good if slightly more difficult to comprehend.

Greedy Guts is a haunting story about an infertile couple who decide to raise a tree stump as their child. The animation is used purposefully and the practical effects are disturbingly realistic. It's thought provoking and unforgettably unique with it's delivery.

I did not know going into Little Otik that it was based on a real fairy tale. As it went along it became more than evident that it was, but the director, Jan Svankmajer, the inspired nut of eastern European animation, worked in the 'fairy tale' aspect in a truly unconventional manner. For a while, for the unsuspecting viewer, it seems like an original story, if one that has some obvious and not so obvious comparisons (one of them for me was the obscure Lynch short The Grandmother, but Eraserhead also seems a tad comparable, and then a bit of A.I. thrown in- these are all shallow observations).

There's a husband and wife who want kids- the woman does, anyway- and he feels bad that they can't procreate. The man sees a little girl that lives in the same apartment building with a fake baby doll. He gets an idea - he goes to a tree stump, pulls it out, carves it, and presents it to his wife (as a joke) as a baby looking like the doll with full anatomical correctness. She takes it completely seriously to heart, like a totally insane person, and the husband goes along with this charade. It seems like it should be unbelievable story-wise, but it works a lot better than it would because of the humor involved, some of it just weird (the pillows the "mother" uses to mark by each month), and some just really, truly funny (some of the performances, all on the same wavelength Svankmajer wants, mostly by the crazy, child-loving mother).

It's when the tree stump is "born"- as if the real baby of the couple has been born, but at the same time is never seen- that things turn into the form of a horror movie and a fairy tale. One might be tempted to say it's like a Czech nightmare trip of Little Shop of Horrors, which may be somewhat accurate for the simple physical act of eating (tree stump's gotta eat, especially human meat). However, the style that one who's seem Svankmajer's work, plus the skillful work of the stop motion animation that springs some surprises even AFTER it starts to spring its contortions and wonderful movements (i.e. the eyeball looking out of the mouth), is in peak form. The story is not as cluttered as Faust, there's lots of awkward domestic humor, and some that are like bizarre running gags (the old pedophile, the obsession with disgusting looking soup in full close-ups, the gardening hoes, the animated storybook, etc).

At the same time as Svankmajer has all this going on, there is an actually interesting performance from the little girl who lives with her parents but is lonely and looks upon Otik as a threat that needs to be protected from the bloody climax that's at the critter's fate. And, in-between the nightmarish quality of the subject matter, Svankmajer has an intention, as del-Toro had with Pan's Labyrinth, to make a contemporary mix of fairy tale and adult drama with a pure sense of the horrors capable in family. It's rough-edged and deranged, it's full of unique camera and editing tricks that stay consistent, it delivers more shocks with food (as mentioned) than I've ever seen, and there's even a level of tragedy reached through the urban horror of the story. Only the very end, which feels like it kind of cuts off things, is a little disappointing, but this can be forgiven for the strength of the vision at hand. Anyone wanting a risk with their film-viewing, seek this out ASAP.

To those who won't go near World cinema and can't even be talked into giving it a try, Little Otik will (justifiably, maybe) bolster their viewpoint with the oft conceived negative aspects they see some world cinema to have with many elements contained within this part-animated, Czech horror/comedy/drama.

It's incoherently weird. A sassy young Czech girl, our protagonist has long blonde ponytails and talks a lot. She has typically Czech parents (or as stereotypes would have us believe); father drinks a lot and watches TV, mother makes vegetable soup with few vegetables - and other various pureed concoctions - all in close up.

They live in the next apartment to a young barren couple. Otik, a tree stump, is dug up by the husband and given to comfort his distraught wife, after they return with the bad news from the fertility clinic. This lump of wood has knots and twigs sprouting where male human bodily parts are situated and look rather obviously so. We are left in no doubt as to which parts are what. 'Little' Otik immediately becomes surrogate son to the mother as she takes to it as her very own.

One of the most creepy things I've seen, ever, is the animated wooden mouth - and moving 'wooden' lips of this log, suckling on the lovely, womanly breast of its 'mother' as it feeds. Superbly done. She beams, besotted, across to her husband - a perplexed and rather nerdy looking office clerk.

To cut a long story short (this is one LONG movie, especially if it's viewed on a commercial TV station - with advert breaks it runs to over 2.5 hours) Otik grows into a giant meat-eating freak, cuckoo-like in its ever open greed for more. First the dog gets 'it', (or was it the cat?) then the janitor, who lusted after the young girl with the pony-tails and soon Otik finds the not particularly welcomed, but plump social worker, come to check up on the "baby" pretty tasty, too! And whatever happened to the postman?

The couple themselves, the family in the next apartment, the young girl especially, all try to cover up the ever more ridiculous scenarios, each becoming ever more hilarious. Whenever we see Otik other than a when in his log-like state, he is animated, which means he springs to life, stop-go and superimposed imagery transforming, he changes quickly, often violently, at times crudely and at others skilfully.

Reminding me of the Hungarian movie 'Hukkle' (Hiccup), where the basic needs and functions surrounding birth, food and death seem to be under intense scrutiny, Little Otik both celebrates and deplores these themes. Drawn from folklore and even a fairytale, the story triumphs and decries them. Taints of Polanski's Rosemary's Baby creep through; that distaste, that intense sense of wrongness.

As to the best in East European cinema bit; well, it's unique, for one. Individual, as in that it genuinely produces something far more scary than bumps in the night and big flashes of thunder. Because it relates to our very base human instincts. It is also at times outrageously funny.

I've seen this brilliant, yet weirdly bad film twice - about the number of times its been on UK TV that I'm aware of. One could score it anything from 1 point, to ten; with full justification. Go for it if you feel you could be up for it, but if you're not sure about the whole world cinema scene, steer clear. I wouldn't want this oddity to influence you badly against some of the best cinema going.

I liked this film very much. As with most comedy/horror films, the plot is fairly absurd. An infertile couple is desperate for a child. When the husband digs up a tree root vaguely resembling a child the woman loves it so much that it comes to life, and life begins to imitate a frightening fairly tale. It gets pretty slow towards the end, and would have been an even better film had it been about 25 minutes shorter. But, the film is great fun to watch, especially the performance of the woman playing Little Otik's mother, who is just insanely funny in the protection of her "son".

It's certainly not the best of it's kind, but it is a hilarious, twisted nightmare of a tale that fans of the genre will likely enjoy.

I'll concentrate on the two scenes I really liked: A street vendor wrapping babies in newspaper and selling them to a queue of women, and the first time Mr Zlabek is shown looking at Alzbetka.

Very early in the movie, a beautiful Božena Horáková and a line of other very pregnant ladies are sitting in what later transpires to be a gynecologist's's waiting room. Božena's husband, Karel Horák, looks out the window and sees a street vendor fishing babies out of a tub of water, wrapping them in newspaper, weighing them and selling them to a waiting queue of housewives. Karel goes downstairs and joins the queue, looks up and sees himself watching him out the window. Karel rejoins his body in the waiting room and Božena emerges from the doctor's room, tearful and no longer pregnant.

Thus we learn that Božena is not actually pregnant at all, although the Horáks both wish she was. This scene is a fantastic introduction to the style and content of *Little Otik*. This is the first time we see stop-motion photography in the movie, and it occurs to me that it's a practical way to film babies, as well.

Not long after wards, the pre-pubescent Alzbetka meets the old man Mr Zlabek on the stairs. While he is putting her glasses on to get a better look at her, she pulls her school tunic down over her knees to avoid the male gaze that every woman is familiar with. As he ogles her, Mr Zlabek's fly unbuttons to reveal the logical extension of his gaze. Alzbetka's mother comes out onto the stairs to help Mr Zlabek, who instantly turns into a helpless old man again. When Alzbetka claims that Mr Zlabek wanted to paw her again, the mother can't, or doesn't want to, see it.

Alzbetka is the only one in this movie who has any idea what's going on. How many among us don't remember the feeling of not being believed just because we were children, even though we were right? (How many mothers have turned a blind eye to the way men look at their daughters, because they depend on the man or they want to avoid confrontation?)

Once Otik came along, I kept watching, but Otik kind of swamped everything. I continued to be interested in things like Alzbetka's motivation for looking after Otik (she had always wanted her parents or at least the Horáks to have a baby); the potential uses Alzbetka might make of a box of matches; Alzbetka's mother's unappetizing lunches and the dramatic tension in a patch of fattening cabbages.

A fairy tale, that name, and my upbringing, always made me imagine not so dramatically the savage that really means to be eaten by an wolf, or a gigantic baby live stump, after all everybody would be leaving happily ever after the Wolf belly was cut by some savior, so the tragic end was not so tragic after all, the spell would always be cast off. One of the matter is, Folk tales although morally intended, could somehow as well ending up have an inconsequential value to whatever force, or miss- action that drove the main characters down that road for whatever that it is was trying to say, therefore loosing their original intention and it's poetical and moral intentions to a happily ever after ending.

Folk tales is a better name for what it is intended, to have our imagination protected like that, or for the children you could say, looses an important aspect of beauty, of actually dealing with the real world in ways that are much more intriguing than the ones that we have been classically presented for the last century and so on, and that it was just blown into my face, how much has infected my own imagination, in realizing I can only imagine the characters being eaten up in a cartoon kind of way, where they are not on the ordeal of the tragic to be experienced. I remember receiving this book when I was kid about this giant, I confess that I don't remember the exact plot of what happened, there are gardens, roses, and he dies, the sadness of that story is not exactly because he dies, but the poetry contained in there, it was something that moved me, that made my whole day ethereal, Things were different that day and tasted different, that experience made my life bigger. Of course, there are measures for what and how it can be shown, I am not here advocating to spook children out of their pajamas and cookies, they are so very sensitive to what it is given to them, but their imagination are much more than princesses and princes fairy tales, and that it is my point about that.

The other point it is to become friends with the monster. "Oh, please don't go—we'll eat you up—we love you so!" Where the Wild Things Are

So the plot of the book it is simple, and if you read the synopses you will know, what the movie is all about. A contemporary folk tale. "When a childless couple learn that they cannot have children, it causes great distress. To ease his wife's pain, the man finds a stump in the backyard and chops it and varnishes it into the shape of a child. However the woman takes the root as her baby and starts to pretend that it is real. When the root takes life they seem to have gained a child; but its appetite is much greater than that of a normal child." (it is funny how whoever writes plots always want it to make very intriguing, so you can be drawn by the riddle of the mystery that it is left upon the lines).

In this case is kind of ludicrous.

The synopses is also the plot of the movie. You could say that all the plots can be done one Thousand times, and what it is actually inside the sandwich that counts. But it is not exactly how many films are made, so many rely so much on the plot, and those mechanisms really give the whole energy for things to happen. But for this movie, things are driven in a different manner, what happens in this flow, inside the story and how it is told that really matter, what it is added inside the sandwich, the journey, the world created, the actual experience of watching it, can only be told in the end, as of while it was happening you couldn't really understand it. This assumption has a meta-linguistic force in the movie, only Alzbetka finds out about the tale, and only she is able to have some control over what it is happening.

Jan Svankmajer adds to the sandwich black humor, surreal Kafkian situations, the old pedophile from Family Guy is there, Strong characters, the food obsession in many many levels, the never ending desiring and consumption driving we can have, how we can be socially driven by the assumption and pressure of that imaginative other's can put upon on what we are, the "mother" completely lost and hysterical on her desire of having a baby, our responsibility as the maker of our own nightmares, our own personal jails, the funny behavior of the cops, and most amazingly to me the thin and amazing thread that he makes this whole world stand upon something we can easily recognize as reality and complete dreamlike surreal experiences, all at the same time.

His shorts movies are inside the story as well, as adds, we can see that the Avante-Garde can quickly be absorbed and consumed into the main stream. A good example examples was Gummo, that turned into Beasts of The Southern Wild, but anyway... Of course, there is the airplane theory, that after it was invented, airplane inventors start to pop up elsewhere, but I am not really sure it is exactly like that.

In a folk tale, I think we are kind of obliged to try to answer this question, what it is the physiological moral power that this story has?

I would say, that it is telling that people (grown ups) and society, can be amazing misunderstood cry babies that are ought to consume bluntly everything it faces, so be caution with your desires. Maybe it is something else. But I think it is about this egotistic, anthropomorphic view of the world with never ending consequences and it's folk tale consequences.

Anti-spoiler warning: Do _not_ see the film's trailer, it spoils the film dreadfully. And this is one film which you don't want spoilt.

This is a long film, in places utterly absorbing, in others quite shocking, in many places extremely funny, but alas rather predictable and a little repetitive too. On the whole quite a work of art. And oh so Czech too, which is nothing but a complement, in particular for the brilliantly executed and highly amusing animation of Otesánek.

There are almost no weak roles, or weakly acted roles, and no matter how crazy people's actions or decisions might be, they all seem to be quite in character. In particular look for excellent performances from Veronika Zilková as the "mother" Bozena, struck with a terminal case of wannabe-breeder rabies. The change in the interplay between the young girl Alzbetka and the very old Mr. Zlabek is superbly done - both having their time as the creepy one, and both as the innocent one.

This was going to get an extremely high score (and I tend to vote low on the whole), until the ending appeared, and went. I thought it cheapened the film slightly, but I still gave it a pretty good score nonetheless.

This movie was very, very disturbing. I can't help but noting that I would never voluntarily see this movie again, and even that I wish I hadn't seen it the first time.

On the other hand, I am forced to admit that it was a very good movie. The fertility imagery was a little TOO heavy-handed for my liking; I felt like shrieking "OKAY, I GET IT ALREADY!!!" about twenty minutes into the movie. But I suppose it all related to the theme, so it was okay.

The Otik-creature is also very disturbing, but the food scenes are probably the worst. I remember the food from my stay in St. Petersburg, and this movie was fairly accurate. Don't see it if you've recently eaten, or plan to eat at any time in the future. Ugh!

I think the movie would be classified as a dark comedy if it were American. As such it was extremely funny; the dialogue is quite witty and the acting is good. But the whole thing was just... disturbing.

Beware of violence; there are a few very bloody, graphic scenes. The nudity is nonsexual, so it's really not a problem even for prudish Americans like me.

A bizarre horror-comedy by Surrealist master Jan Svankmajer that adapts and reinterprets the folk story of Otesanek (aka Greedy Guts) for the big screen.

Otesanek tells the story of the struggle of a childless couple, Bozena and Karel, to hide and control heir piece-of-wood son Otesanek -a freak of nature with an insatiable appetite that they brought to life- and to stop him behaving wildly.

The film re-examines the myth of the primeval creation, in which the natural order is subverted and disrespected. The couple succumbs to an act of greedy love that produces, as a result, a greedy gluttonous carnivore despite the creature being a piece of wood.

On the other hand, Svankmajer depicts with great insight the sins of parenthood in our modern world, in which children are spoiled rotten, to whom everything is allowed, any bad act excused, and nothing denied.

The movie also depicts with great humor and realism the social dynamics of small groups in blocks of apartments and neighborhoods, paced by gossip, the power of appearances, the help and support neighbors give to each other, the enmities and tensions existing amongst them, the human types that populate them, etc.

The role of food in this movie is also very interesting, as most human characters in the movie eat disgusting porridge-ish meals, despite them fancying meat, while Otesanek is the only one eating meat all the time! The Actors are all great and charming in their respective roles. Veronika Zilková plays with great conviction the non-easy to play barren wife Bozena, while Jan Hartl plays with sweetness her doubtful and confused husband Karel. Also terrific are the actors playing the good-hearted neighbors: Kristina Adamcová as the incisive rebel child Alzbetka -who is also the catalyst of the story-, Jaroslava Kretschmerová as Alzbetka's sensible Mother, Pavel Nový as Alzbetka's typical working-class male Father, and Dagmar Stríbrná as the patient caretaker.

The stop-motion animation of Otesanek is delightfully awkward, especially when Otesanek is a baby, and the illustrations by Svankmajer's wife for the original tale in the book Alzbetka is reading are beautifully colorful and artistic. They are a contrast to the ugly-looking 70-80s colors and lighting with which Svankmejer shot the movie. Also delightful are the episodes involving the old spectacled neighbor and Alzbetka, which are really naughty.

On the negative side, beyond the ugly film and colors used, the movie is too long and its pace too slow at times.

A grotesque mesmerizing humorous adult tale with a great story, terrific performances, and very interesting themes. This is not a film for lazy watchers, though.

After watching Jan Švankmajer's "Otesánek" ("Little Otik" in English), all that I can say is "What the hell did I just watch?" Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty good movie, just one of the more twisted movies out there. Jan Hartl and Veronika Žilková play an infertile Czech couple who adopt a tree stump as a baby...only to see it come to life and start eating everyone who crosses its path!

Yes, it's mainly a black comedy from the master of weird animation, but while watching the movie I got the feeling that it was also looking at the residual effects of the Soviet occupation, as people eat rotten-looking porridge. It also seemed as though the girl befriended Otik out of a feeling of alienation from her parents (the same sort of reason why the children in Stephen King's novels join up with each other). Whatever the case, I liked the movie. But just remember, it's a VERY disturbing movie.

This movie will not disappoint those familiar with Mr. Svankmajer's previous films (both short and long). All the familiar elements are here: Eery atmosphere, surreal story and great animation (though too little of it. It brought to mind many movies, ranging from Pinnochio to Rosemary's Baby, Delicatessen, Basket Case, the Elephant Man and Frankenstein, to name but a few. Also, it asks some important questions about motherhood, fatherhood, friendship and accepting the different. It's a bit toned down and slow moving, but once you get into it, you'll have a feeling of "wow".

This is one fractured little fairytale! More Grimm Brothers than Disney, it is a truly twisted tale that is definitely not for the kiddies. It is a live action feature with stop motion animation sequences scattered throughout. The characters, although actual actors almost seemed animated themselves. The way it was filmed gave me the impression I was a witness to someone's actual dream (or nightmare). The choice of cast could not have been better. The performances are excellent and even the secondary players are perfect in their roles. The wife is absolutely mad and the husband knows this but cannot quite bring himself to deal with it. He spends much of the picture ranting and raving at the lunacy of it all. The wacky couple are nicely complimented by a parade of strange supporting characters. Among them, a little girl obsessed with sex and babies and a pedophile senior citizen. The characters imagine seeing some truly bizarre images. The first scene is our husband looking down on a fishmonger from a gynecologists office window. Instead of taking fish from the tank he is scooping up babies in his net and wrapping them up in newspaper. And of course there is little Otik. He's a freaking tree stump. An ugly, crying gnarly tree stump. At one point the mother scolds her husband for not varnishing her son enough. There is a body count, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to hardcore horror fans. This is for anyone who tastes run towards the strange and unusual. I did feel that the film runs a little long and I would have liked to have seen more of the stop motion animation. The film isn't going to be for everyone as it is definitely odd. It is delightfully demented and at times even disturbing but absolutely entertaining. It is a feast for the eyes and an assault on the senses. Highly Recommended!

I think it'd be fairly safe to say that Jan Svankmajer's 2000 Czech film Little Otik will be unlike most things, indeed anything, that you've ever previously seen; the film a quite mad but gloriously creative, often blackly amusing and frankly rather scary piece blurring lines between realism and surrealism whilst taking on a great deal of social satire and keeping a wholly self-aware eye on proceedings. I rather like films grounded within realistic enough realms covering people whom happen to stumble upon an otherworldly presence; a presence that arrives with its own infrastructure and makeup before just being let loose amidst the people and their problems with which we spent the opening. Little Otik is one of these films. If one were permitted to use hindsight, one might compare it favourably to a recent Canadian film entitled Splice; a film about those we sensed could exist and were going through the motions in life which came with some very real, very personal problems – both projects ending up happening to have this somewhat beastly, rather monstrous creation of an uncanny nature just crash land into proceedings mixing things up and allowing such a presence to act as the catalyst for a greater extent of dramatic content.

The film eventually comes to follow the misadventures to that of Alzbetka (Adamcová), a young teen-aged girl living with her mother and father but, crucially, without siblings, in a humble part of the Czech Republic amidst several other patrons in a tower block. Her presence is one of a supporting act initially, the acts and experiences of certain neighbours paving way for her greater involvement. Alzbetka's life is one of a carefree and somewhat boisterous nature; the charging down the narrow stone stairwell in the process of chasing a ball, even when it bounds out of the main entrance and into the road thus nearly leading to tragedy, alluding to an energetic and adventurous person; something that goes hand in hand with what is a distinct characteristic of curiosity - the reading of certain books on contraception another of her little hobbies but one of which is frowned upon by a father, whom looks more temperamental than he probably is.

In the mean time, neighbouring married couple Karel (Hartl) and Božena Horák (Zilková) cannot conceive; Karel's job as a doctor seeing him come into contact on occasion with an array of pregnant women whom he must aid and treat forcing him into working with, on a professional level, what it is he cannot aid or work with on a personal level. He glances out of his office window, daytime hallucinations alluding to a greater extent of frustration bordering on mental illness when he 'observes' arrays of newborns being handed out as if an exchange at a market stall highlighting his perception of everybody else's apparent ease as to which to garner a child. The Horák's secluded retreat, merely a shack with a small garden away form the bustle of the town, acts as the locale in which an event straddling that line between what could be perceived as a miracle or a curse occurs; the uprooting of a rogue tree stump, and the mock caring for it as if it were a newborn, seeing Božena forcefully tear everything off of a table so as to make room to cater for it such is her desperation to play the mothering role. It's here the film leaps from its Czech working class foundations and into some other realm; this caring, against all odds, eventually giving way the damned chunk of wood coming alive and adopting human baby-like characteristics: the titular Otik. The situation at once calls to mind the likes of the famous Pinocchio fairy tale and, given the premise of the mother's maternity situation plus shack-like locale, the coming of Christ as this miracle birth unfolds.

Despite the high concept, not for one second does director Svankmajer deviate from the giddiness of such a selling point, nor other necessary proceedings, and allow for the item overbearing all to act as the sole focal point. Such an action would render the film a freak show; rather, the integration of the concept to act as a band around which deeper studies of character frameworks; observations on morals and social commentary as well as the hybridising of genres are allowed to play out. Take, for instance, Michael Bay's 2007 science-fiction film Transformers; a piece which cannot get past the fact it has, at the core of it, machines capable of turning from an everyday piece of machinery into a large robot - as a result, becomes so overwhelmed by its U.S.P. or essential premise that it submits to the continual gratification of the idea leading onto a mess of character study and genre demands trailing miles behind.

The film's morphing into this odd meshing of serial-killer sub-genre conventions as people in the block go missing blends well with the constant questions of ethics the parents ask themselves in relation to killing it; caring for it and keeping it a secret. Alzbetka's role as that of a supporting act is gradually manoeuvred, impressively, into a more recurrent character whose strand is at once an interesting tale of detection later playing more as a tragedy. With this, the film is peppered with a wry commentary on the Americanised, consumerism driven lifestyle that has seemingly infiltrated this, an apartment block acting as an epitomisation of Czech living, via a series of televised advertisements; advertisements speaking of products promising much which consist of shots dissolving into actual physical incarnations of the things malfunctioning in the home. Svankmajer's film, a body horror in which characters venture out to see a body horror movie and then come home criticising it, is a knotting of several codes and genres together to produce something at once gleefully original and impressively played.

Jan Svankmajer is certainly one of the strangest filmmakers in history....and I am not talking about strange but mega-strange...and often very creepy. This Czech filmmaker has been working on mostly stop-motion films for decades and the movies are almost impossible to describe....you just have to see them to believe the weirdness of Svankmajer's imagination! His version of "Alice in Wonderland" ("Alice", 1988) is about his most bizarre films. But tonight I finally got to see his "Greedy Guts" (also called "Little Otik") and certainly didn't disappoint when it comes to weirdness!

"Greedy Guts" is unusual for Svankmajer in that it's mostly a live action film...with some stop-motion here and there. In this bizarre fairy tale- like story, a young couple want to have children but cannot. One day, the husband pulls up a tree stump and fashions it into a crude version of a child. While it obviously looks almost nothing like a child and he apparently intended it as a joke, his deranged wife believes it's her new baby and goes to amazing lengths to convince her neighbors she's pregnant. Ultimately, she pretends to go into labor and soon comes home from the hospital with this tree stump baby! But the couple hide the fact that it's a stump and pretend as if the child is real...and the neighbors are fooled.

Now I know this sounds strange....but soon the film will go off the deep end in strangeness! Soon the woman begins to feed this 'baby' cabbage soup. However, the baby soon magically becomes a living creature...and it doesn't want soup...it wants meat! First, it eats a few pets...which is annoying enough. But then it eats a neighbor...and then another neighbor...and then another! But the foster parents of this abomination cannot bring themselves to kill the monster and so they keep it hidden in the basement. During this time, the little girl you've seen throughout the film finds Little Otik and befriends it...and begins bringing it food as well! What's next in this super-bizarro but well made film? Well, get the DVD from Netflix and find out for yourself. And, if you think of it, try "Alice" as well. I would like to say you won't be sorry...but you might! The films are not for normal folks but offer a twisted version of stop-motion that is hard to fathom until you see it for yourself!

Karel is husband to a childless and melancholy wife, Bozena. One day he cuts down a tree and pulls the stump out of the ground with his own hands. Karel finds that the stump is shaped surprisingly like a small human figure. After a little pruning and a coat of varnish, he presents it to Bozena as a joke. Much to his horror, she adopts it as her own child. They take the creature home to their apartment and hide it from the neighbors. Soon, however, the creature begins to behave like a growing child and acquires a voracious appetite. A curious young neighbor girl, Alzbetka, becomes concerned when she realizes that the scenario is described, in detail, in her book of fairy tales.

In "Little Otik," or "Otesanek," Jan Svankmajer continues his recent and surprising trend to give more screen time to straight live action scenes, using his moments of stop-motion surrealism as a side dish (or dessert, as in "Conspirators of Pleasure") rather than as a main course. The surreal sequences are excellent, if few and far between. Unfortunately, Svankmajer seems reluctant to show Otik in his full glory later in the film. This is disappointing not only because the audience is denied the typical indulgence in Svankmajer's plastic artistry, but also because the film rests entirely on the problem of Otik's appearance. There is really nothing else to drive the story. As usual in a Svankmajer film, the characters are fleshy puppets, and the plot is incidental--neither element is able to provide the film with any narrative momentum.

Running over 2 hours, "Little Otik" is by far the longest of Svankmajer's features. It is also tells a very linear story and manages to be his most accessible film. Unfortunately, though Svankmajer teases us with inspired moments, he allows his story to drag, and it never quite transports us to the sort of hidden, magical world achieved in "Alice" and "Faust."

This movie does seem to drag a little toward the end, but any reasonable person should be hanging on to see what ELSE will happen, because things do happen in this movie. It is full of funny characters and weird situations, so it is quite amusing, in a "Twilite Zone" sort of way. Did you like "Erasurehead", "Dead Alive", and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"?

This movie illustrates, in fairy-tail fashion, what sort of AWFUL things can happen if you tamper with the natural order of things.