Little Otik

I have no idea how I heard about this movie…but I’m glad I did. It’s based on this Czech fairy tale about this couple who can’t have a child. In desperation to make his wife happy, the husband carves a baby out of a stump he dug up that resembles a child. When he gives it to his wife, almost immediately I think he realizes that it was a bad mistake. She immediately attaches to it, and cares for it as if it were real.
She puts a huge amount of effort into creating this lie that she’s pregnant…different sized pregnancy stomachs and everything…I’m sure she’s convinced herself that she’s pregnant. After she finally “gives birth” the husband comes home to find the baby alive…haha yah, wtf this wooden baby is now breastfeeding…
She keeps the baby hidden from others…obviously if people saw they would be very suspicious and well…that’s not normal…
The baby, who they named Otik in case that wasn’t obvious, grew at an extremely fast pace, and had an incredible appetite…for flesh…dun dun dunnn XD
At the same time as this whole thing is unfolding, the next-door neighbor, a little girl, is reading a Czech fairytale. The fairytale is eerily similar to what the girl is observing next door.
First of all, the stop motion in this film was fantastic, and I wish that there were more…all the scenes with Otik were done with stop motion.
Something I think the film could have done without would have been…when the girl was reading the story out loud…they took us and actually showed us scenes from what she was reading…and, it just felt redundant to me, because most of them ended up happening in real life anyway. I mean, that could have been done on purpose, well, I’m sure it was done on purpose, but it just didn’t work for me…personally.
I think I need to look into more of this directors films…talking to a few people, they’ve said that a couple of his other films are actually much better…so, if I enjoyed this one as much as I did, I think I’ll enjoy the others.
Funniest moments in the movie…the dinner times at the next door neighbors house. Every single meal was absolutely disgusting! Haha. That, and the father in that household, it just cracked me up.
Annnd one more thing, the ending. I loved how it ended. We are read from the book, that the way that Otik is killed is by an old woman with a hoe, a gardening hoe…and she slices his stomach and everyone/thing he has eaten comes out. They end the movie with the old woman, hoe over her shoulder, marching down the stairs, determined look on her face, with the little girl practically hanging off her legs, protesting and screaming for her to stop. (:

7.8/10