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Little Otik
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Wikipedia article
'Little Otik' , also known as 'Greedy Guts', is a 2000 Czech surreal dark comedy horror film by Jan vankmajer and Eva vankmajerov. Based on the folktale Otesnek by Karel Jaromr Erben, the film is a comedic live action, stop motion-animated feature film set mainly in an apartment building in the Czech Republic.
The film uses the Overture to 'Der Freischtz' (1821) by Carl Maria von Weber as the score.
Plot
Karel Hork (Jan Hartl) and Boena Horkov (Veronika ilkov) are a childless couple and for medical reasons are doomed to remain so. While on vacation with their neighbors at a house in the country, Karel decides to buy the house at the suggestion of his neighbor. When he is fixing up the house, he digs up a tree stump that looks vaguely like a baby. He spends the rest of the evening cleaning it up and then presents it to his wife. She names the stump Otk and starts to treat it like a real baby. She then works out a plan to fake her pregnancy and becoming more and more impatient she speeds up the process and 'gives birth' one month early.
Otk comes alive and has an insatiable appetite. Albtka (Kristina Adamcov), the neighbor's daughter, has been suspicious all along, and when she reads the fairy tale about Otesnek, the truth becomes clear to her. Meanwhile, little Otk has been just eating and growing. At one point he eats some of Boena's hair, and another day she returns home to find that Otk has eaten their cat. Karel and his wife are at odds with Karel pushing for killing the thing and Boena defending it as their child. The baby later consumes a postal worker (Gustav Vondrek) and then a social worker (Jitka Smutn).
The resulting deaths lead Karel to tie up and lock Otk away in the basement of their apartment building, leaving Otk to starve. Albtka secretly takes over as prime caretaker. She tries to keep Otk fed with normal human food, but, when her mother stops her, she is forced to drawing straws (matches in this case) to choose a person to feed to Otk. The chosen victim is an old man and pedophile, Mr. lbek (Zdenk Kozk) who has been stalking her recently. Deciding she cannot take the stalking anymore, Albtka lures Mr. lbek to the basement where he gets entangled by Otik's vines and devoured. Karel himself later becomes a victim when he comes into the basement with a chainsaw but on seeing Otk he hesitates and calls him "son" before dropping the chainsaw. Afterwards, Boena goes into the basement and is heard screaming; having become a victim herself. In the end, Otk disobeys Albtka despite repeated warnings and eats all of Mrs. Sprvcov's (Dagmar Stbrn) cabbage patch, prompting the old woman to take charge.
Ending
In the fairy tale upon which the movie is based, the old woman kills Otesnek by splitting his stomach open with a hoe; however, the film ends with her descending the stairs, Albtka reciting the end of the fairy tale tearfully; the audience is not allowed to witness the deed.Cast
*Veronika ilkov as Boena Horkov
*Jan Hartl as Karel Hork
*Kristina Adamcov as Albtka
*Jaroslava Kretschmerov as Albtka's Mother
*Pavel Nov as Albtka's Father
*Dagmar Strbrn as Pani spravcova (the caretaker)
*Zdenek Kozk as Mr. lbek
*Gustav Vondracek as Mldek, the Postman
*Jitka Smutn as Bulankov, the Social worker
Reception
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 84% based on , with a weighted average rating of 7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Though rather overlong, 'Little Otik' is a whimsical, bizarre treat."
'Little Otik' was placed at 95 on 'Slant Magazine's best films of the 2000s.
Notes
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