Directed by:
Jan SvěrákScreenplay:
Jan SvěrákComposer:
Michal NovinskiCast:
Ondřej Svěrák, Zdeněk Svěrák, Oldřich Kaiser, Kristýna Badinková Nováková, Filip Čapka, Jiří Macháček, Jiří Lábus, Petr Čtvrtníček, Pavel Liška (more)VOD (1)
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When six-year-old Ondra is forced to throw away his scruffy, sawdust-stuffed old teddy bear, Kooky, he prays for the safe return of his furry friend. Later, across town, Kooky is about to be crushed in a rubbish dump when he suddenly comes to life, making his escape into a mysterious forest. The naïve, cuddly Kooky needs help to survive in the rough-and-ready world of the forest and he finds it when he meets the crotchety forest guardian Hergot. But Hergot has his enemies too – the malevolent Nushka and his goons plan to take over the forest, trying to prove that the short-sighted but good-hearted Hergot is not up to the job of guardian.
Using puppetry and live action, Kooky is both an inventive, thrilling family adventure and a celebration of the childhood imagination from Academy Award-winning director Jan Sverák. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (6)
For several weeks now, Kooky has been peeping at me from the pages of newspapers and magazines, in the form of a film about a film and from the TV screen, and so one tends to see a return to the glorious past of Czech animated film in it. The reality is something like this - I felt like a music master who chooses an excellent singer with a subordinate appearance as his partner and then desires only to listen to her. In short, my relationship with Kooky must necessarily be intellectual, because emotionally it completely missed the mark for me. It is certainly possible to speak in superlatives about the formal aspects, whether the artistic or primarily camera work and editing, but I have a fairly significant problem with the screenplay and the pace of the film, which subdued and lulled me throughout. If a person visits a lunchtime showing at a movie theater, has not spent a sleepless night or had a heavy lunch, and still has to exert an unbearable amount of energy to stay awake, something is not right. Kooky definitely has several individual elements that can be highlighted, but as a whole, it did not impress me and even my third star is truly more of a recognition of a certain uniqueness because not only on the Czech but also on a global scale, it is certainly an original film, a combination of puppets and nature along with artistic craziness like the little fairy-tale characters' cars, and it brings together something that has not been seen before. As for the animation, but also the artistic aspects, I do get the impression that Barta's film In the Attic or Who Has a Birthday Today? surpassed Svěrák's film. Although, understandably, Barta's film will have many more viewers due to the well-known Oscar-winning filmmaker and the media support, and will undoubtedly be more successful. Thanks to its visual orgies and a more dynamic pace, Barta's film perfectly suppressed my awareness of its very simple screenplay, while here I clearly felt those shortcomings. Overall impression: 50%. I attended the showing with my children, who should be in the ideal age category for watching a similar film, and even their final reaction was very lukewarm.
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I'm quite sorry about the fact that most people gush about Kooky's originality, playfulness and wonderful childishness, yet they have no idea about Barta's one year older film, In the Attic or Who Has a Birthday Today?. It has everything that Kooky has, but it seems much more original. Well, back to the pink... Excuse me... The red stuffed animal and his forest gang. It is a very nice film. It’s original, with charming puppets, good cinematography and music. But I still gave it three stars because I found it too long, without suspense in the ending - although it was an "action ending" - and almost boring. Overall, it was good, but I don't particularly regret that I didn't catch the bear in the movie theatre. At home and on DVD, it looked just right.
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An interestingly made film, but at its core is annoyingly cute and warm in a typical Czech fashion. I was bored from the very first minute and only watched it all out of respect for the creators, because, technically, they’ve done a very good job that could be appreciated abroad. I guess I’m not the target audience…
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A tough adventure drama. Svěrák created an impressive and mainly functional world which maybe isn’t completely suitable for kids (the mom in this movie is the bad guy!), but rather for people who want to return to their childhood. Excellent voice-overs, delightful camerawork, great action scenes (that truck reminds me of the Nazis in that Indy movie and the races in The Phantom Menace) and fine music make Kuky wonderful to watch. Bring on more original attempts at revitalizing Czech film.
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The Svěrák father and son duo have definitely shown that their collaboration thrives in practically any scenario. It was surprising mainly because this is a puppet film, with very peculiar characters as well. It's original, interesting, fresh, with moments of action, but still fairy-tale-like. Zdeněk Svěrák confirmed that his voice is suitable for dubbing, although I had to get used to the voices of some of the actors. In the end, however, it's a film that certainly won't get lost in Zdeněk Svěrák's filmography.
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Photo © Falcon
![Kooky - Making of](http://image.pmgstatic.com/cache/resized/w663/files/images/film/photos/162/603/162603645_ec63db.jpg)
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