Do you ever find yourself wondering how much more you might have done with your life if only you'd just been able to bring yourself to give a damn? All those things you could have achieved if only it hadn't seemed like so much bloody effort, so you did as much as you had to do to get by, and settled for a life of cosy mediocrity instead.
Or is that just me?
In any case, it's at times like this, when regret threatens to sweep over us like a tsunami, that we need a very special film in our lives, a film that reminds us of just how much we, the apathetic, truly have.
That film, my friends, is called The Wizard of Speed and Time, but in the interest of concision, I shall henceforth refer to it as TWOSAT. It's the brainchild of animator and sometime Disney collaborator, Mike Jittlov - he's a man of many talents, but self-awareness does not appear to be one of them.
Let's take a look at exhibit A, the original short upon which he based the feature length version:
Wasn't that delightful? I bet you smiled, just a little bit. And then, if you're anything like me, you'll have thought slightly harder about the amount of grafting involved to create the stop-motion sequences and decided that this was clearly the work of an amiable madman. If you're slightly more like me, you'll have gone in search of his other short films, which are equally impressive even if they don't score quite so highly in either the adorableness or batshit insanity categories.
Thus it was that I settled down to watch the full-length version of TWOSAT in a gently contented frame of mind, prepared to be charmed, entertained and perhaps (in the event of any further musical numbers) slightly embarrassed.
98 minutes later I emerged, feeling as though I'd been slapped around the face with a fully-frozen tuna.
There are people out there who'll tell you that this is a wonderful little film, full of heart and pluck. They're wrong, totally, but they're probably not the sort of people you'd want to hang out with for long enough to find out their opinion on the weather, much less a low-budget effects flick directed by an emotionally stunted middle-aged man-child who not only writes songs about how wonderful he is, but then puts them into a film intended for general public release. These are probably also the sort of people who think it's okay to electrocute bike thieves, but don't put too much thought into who'd actually want to steal a part-motorised pushbike with a propeller on the front.
In case you hadn't worked it out, I think Mike Jittlov is kind of a jerk. Granted, this is hardly a rare quality in Hollywood, and certainly not a barrier to a profitable career. I'm not sure, however, whether I've ever seen a movie where a key figure shows quite such an ignorance of their own jerkishness - I've heard rumours that Shyamalan's The Lady In The Water may come close, but that's another story for another post*.
Actor/writer/director Jittlov sets himself up as the little guy, starring as himself and building whole armies of straw men to set ablaze on the altar of his own ego. Some of them are obvious targets - the slimy producers, for instance, who seek to use his undeniable talent without offering adequate compensation. When he starts taking potshots at the unions, though, and at the tax office, I find myself wondering if he's standing up for the underdog or simply for himself.
Uncomfortable watching, then, but also uncomfortable to write about. I actually don't enjoy writing personal attacks, but I find it difficult to separate Jittlov the film character has impossible to separate from Jittlov, the man who wrote him. This turns the whole thing into some sort of twisted wish-fulfilment fantasy created by a lonely, angry pre-teen. Don't you find that impossibly sad? I know I do.
Still, it's really good to know that somebody like this managed to find a safe outlet for their frustrations. Better that they're making films to show at the cinema than... yeah, you know the rest.
*possibly next week, but only if I'm feeling really masochistic.
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