Zofo

This is the first Nicolas Cage movie that I've managed to watch till the end. The beard really helps.

Early on the film brings up the theme of plagiarism, which is very appropriate as the basic plot is borrowed from the short film «Sequence» (Carles Torrens, 2013), without ever mentioning it, of course. In other words, the main asset of the film - the striking originality of the plot - does not really belong to it.

As usual when turning a short into a feature-length film, the latter turned out to be more naturalistic, stylistically diluted - and in a way less interesting, but the sheer volume allowed to elaborate on the plot and saturate it with details, deepen the characters and motivations. The way that the authors chose was to (somewhat satirically) show the effect that the unexpected fame has on a person, and then how the cancel culture works. These themes are not new and are explored without brilliance - which is the main weakness of the film. It just doesn't deliver much.

The editing choices are sometimes interesting, sometimes sloppy, otherwise the film was shot and acted out at an average level at best. Cage has created an expressive and memorable character, but he speaks in an unpleasant artificial tone, he and other actors constantly shake their heads like pigeons, repeat words - a prime example of bad naturalism in acting.

The ending, which reveals the mechanisms and explores the social implications of what happened, in my opinion, adds a lot, but it cannot turn this very average film into something more.

Noble attempt, but ultimately not an accomplished artistic achievement.

These dolls would be appropriate for a children's film, which this is most certainly not. Sloppy, jerky animation and awkward character movements once again remind us of cute stop motion shorts from around 1960s, but in an adult feature from 2000s it doesn't work and is simply unpleasant to look at. In short, aesthetically this film is for kindergarteners, while the story is obviously not. The direction is more or less adequate although not particularly inventive, the action is somewhat slow, not everything onscreen is interesting or necessary. For this reason, and also because the story is not really developed into much detail, the film seems somewhat overlong.

Take for comparison Jim Henson's «The Dark Crystal» (1982) to see a well-developed story of the same kind or Tim Burton's and Henry Selick's films to see good stop motion animation.

The overall impression: not bad, but not good enough.

Essentially a home video. No acting, no lighting, no cinematography. Not to say about special effects. Editing is the only thing that looks professional, that is - traditional for today's mainstream cinema, which is not in itself an achievement. And there's no real story to tell, just the basic time loop scheme. Nothing to talk about.