The sheer sustained silliness of this spoof silent comedy is what finally compels admiration. It’s like chancing across a bunch of eerily gifted kids by the roadside putting on a bizarrely accomplished, very extended series of magic tricks and circus acrobatic stunts. You could at first find it very startling and funny, then a little dull but finally after an hour or so enter a home stretch of being just stunned at the simple fact that it is still going on, and at such a pitch of crazy inventiveness you can’t help but feel awe at this film’s absolute dedication to gag productivity.
Director Mike Cheslik and his lead actor and co-writer Ryland Brickson Cole Tews mix live action with homespun animation in black-and-white, in the style of Buster Keaton and Chuck Jones’s Looney Tunes creations. There’s a bit of Terry Gilliam in there and maybe the more disturbing work of FW Murnau as well. It’s perhaps not accurate to compare it to Guy Maddin, the Canadian pasticheur, because this film gets real laughs in a way that Maddin, however estimable, mostly does not.
