Woodenhead

2003 fairy tale

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A garbage dump employee is directed to escort his boss's daughter to meet her husband, and a bunch of strange things happen.

Throw this in the fascinating failure category, and then almost immediately forget about it. There are some neat ideas, but this is ultimately more irritating than anything else. First, it's got a one-named director (Florian), and that's just annoying. Then, there's the dubbing thing. The dialogue is very obviously recorded separately from what we're seeing, and I'm fairly positive that the dialogue was actually written after the filming. It's sometimes humorous, but like everything else in this movie, it's more weird than meaningful. The whole movie challenges you to adjust to this bizarre flow, and I doubt most people are going to be able to do it. There are weirdo circus moves, a great dance scene between Gert and the gal, and a moment where the screen goes completely black for over a minute. And those intermittent throat gargle sounds and a sound effect that sounded like an electric razor. This is a worthy effort made on what was obviously a very limited budget. Florian throws a lot of ideas at the viewer and either dares to be different or dares to be a guy trying to remake Fando and Lis. Woodenhead just fails to deliver anything memorable or meaningful and never really develops a confident voice. I didn't hate the movie at all and would definitely watch something else by Florian, especially if he gets himself another name, but this just didn't feel complete.

I looked this up and was completely wrong. Not wrong enough to go back and edit this or anything though. Apparently, all of the sound was recorded before the film was shot. From Wikipedia:

"[Florian] Habicht [He does have another name!] states on the DVD that the film was inspired by a dream in which two angels appearing as Milli Vanilli fly into a stadium and tell him that the band lip-synched their music, apparently unaware that this is common knowledge. They then tell him to make a film where the sound is recorded before the visuals."

That almost makes me want to bump this up to a 14/20.

Shane trivia: Shane is married to a person who went to a Milli Vanilli concert.