James Preble (director Kentucker Audley) has recurring goals about Cap’n Kelly, a KFC-alike mega-brand. The following factor he is aware of, very a lot awake and out and about, he finds himself at a Cap’n Kelly, persuaded to buy certainly one of their new hen shakes – a disgusting sounding liquid concoction of blended hen meat and whipped gravy. We later uncover that his hen goals have been implanted – subliminal promoting, after which some. That is Strawberry Mansion in a nutshell – an absurdist odyssey set largely in individuals’s goals, with an underlying commentary on company malpractice. It’s peculiar, beguiling stuff.
Nothing regular occurs on this movie. It’s 2035, though Preble, considerably repressed and by no means with no fedora, looks like he’s from the Forties. His lonely existence might do with some magic and nicely, he will get it, assigned to research a lifetime of untaxed goals for the aged Bella Isadora (Penny Fuller). Stepping inside her unconscious, by the use of an enormous papier-mâché helmet and a mountain of video tapes, he meets her youthful self (Grace Glowicki), and, amidst a plot involving these darkish company forces, a romantic relationship quickly blossoms.
That is an unapologetically romantic movie, pure-hearted and full of affection.
From there, because the boundaries between goals and actuality blur, we meet a speaking fly, mouse sailors, a saxophonist-playing frog waiter… and so on. Surrealism is in its bones, in each body. The funds is as low-cost as chips, with an aesthetic that heartily leans into that, as if it’s all held along with bits of string and Sellotape, which in some circumstances it might be – effects-wise, it’s extra Méliės than Marvel. Typically this works in its favour; generally not. A lot of it feels prefer it was made in a bed room, and at worst has the whiff of faculty performs about it. Clearly in thrall to Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry and David Lynch, it doesn’t attain these heights, due to its monetary limitations, but in addition as a result of it’s so self-consciously kooky.
Nonetheless. That is an unapologetically romantic movie, pure-hearted and full of affection, and its sideways exploration of the human coronary heart lingers. It’s mild, candy, creative and bold, in each second busting out of its funds. And that’s charming in itself.
