Rating: 
Summary: Horror for adults.
Review: Little Otik is a made-for-TV film constructed in the way of the old, precious Czech films of 30 years ago. It sets a folktale (of which we are given the essential of the text) in the contemporary urban Czech Republic. A lot of the interest of the story is in the resultant recasting.This only makes the film all the more faithful to the mythical force of the original tale, which is part-Little Red Riding Hood, part-Alien, but cuts much closer to the bone than either LRRH or Alien. Do take that as a warning: Little Otik is a horror story, and one that makes Alien (any installment) look like a ride in an amusement park. Otik himself is also a more horrible creation than any version of the Aliens, and achieved with 1% of the budget for special effects. One example of the more-than-successful recasting for a modern urban context -- In the original tale the monster is male but all the *active* participants are women. When the tale is turned into a 2-hour contemporary film, this aspect becomes much enriched. The transgressing mother that is at the origin of the tale becomes one instance of urban motherhood, linked into the usual variety of real, incipient or wishful mothers. And the underlying impulsions are given full screen time, with few words or none.
Because the film has a true, deep, classical horror as its backbone, it can get down to the business of delivering it without masses of special effects, without surprise cuts, without terrifying sounds, without ominous hints. And most of all without extraneous business. This is why it is more than worth watching. Perhaps, though, the TV destination pushed the author into somewhat too much restraint. You do want a movie not just to recount something but to show it, and we are only shown the necessary minimum. This is the opposite excess to Alien's and, though far less destructive than scary-movie tactics are in Alien, it still leaves you with the feeling of having missed something. The folktale text we are given has the same all's-well-that-ends-well final fixup that many versions of Little Red Riding Hood have (when the hunter comes in). To the movie's credit, it chooses to end precisely at that moment, with a black screen. We can believe in the Happy End or take up the myth in full. (This is close to the Sphynx myth, and the Sphynx is eternal.) In either case, up to that point, we have been plunged in the mind-world of eternal horror tales. ...
Rating:
Summary: Psychologically Surrealistic Vision of a Czech Fairy Tale...
Review: Little Otik is a psychologically surrealistic and bizarre vision of the Czech fairy tale, Otesánek, which is a tale of greed and gluttony in the backdrop of a dysfunctional family and a modernizing society. The writer and director Jan Svankmajer expresses greed through Karel (Jan Hartl) and Bozena (Veronika Zilková), who are infertile, as they ache to start forming a family. However, their infertility devastates both of them as Karel begins to have strange delusions of infants, and Bozena enters a deep depression. In order to cope with the difficulties the couple buys a small weekend cottage where they can retreat to get their mind off the bad things in life.
Karel decides to clean up the yard around their new cottage by cutting down the trees and pulling up the roots. In the process, Karel discovers a root with some likeness of a newborn, and he decides to play a little trick on his wife Bozena to lighten up the gloomy atmosphere around them. However, when Karel brings home the root Bozena has a break down, which seems to lead her to believe that the root truly is an infant. Bozena sees a navel, fingers, and a mouth and so on, which intensify her delusion. In panic Karel grabs the root and begins to hit hard against the table repeating the words, "wood, wood, wood", but it only strikes Bozena with more horror of how he treats what she sees as a child.
In a secret charade Karel and Bozena pretend being pregnant, as she wants to nurture the root. The day comes when Bozena gives birth, which is funny in a peculiar way, and Karel has to drive her to their cottage where she hides out. When Karel returns he makes a horrific discovery as the root has turned into a live thing, which they end up calling Otik.
The maternal connection between Bozena and Otik could be likened to Dr. Frankenstein's affection for the creature that he created as he yells, "It's alive!" The affection could be seen as an obsessive as the creature grows rapidly and its seemingly endless hunger drives them to near bankruptcy. When Otik's hunger arises and no food is to be served then Otik grabs whatever is available, which leads the couple into a quandary as they have to balance the law with their love for Otik. It turns into a strange tale of grotesque and surreal decisions as the little Otik turns into the monstrous Otik.
Next door through the eyes of a neighbor child, Alzbetka, the audience gets to experience her abusive family whose only way of educating her is a firm slap on the head. Alzbetka does not have any friends, which is something she is dreaming of having, and she does not want to befriend her classmates, according to her, who are stupid. Alzbetka reads books on human sexuality and whatever else she can get her hands on. When the neighbor becomes pregnant Alzbetka is the only person who smells something fishy, as she investigates and discovers the truth through a fairytale book.
Through the story in the book Alzbetka foresees a gruesome path cornered in blood, gluttony, and a surreal friendship. The gluttony in the story seems to be an analogy to the modernizing society in which the Czech people want more things to fill their small apartments. This notion is also supported through Alzbetka's father who constantly watches TV at night, while devouring different kind of snacks, desiring whatever the commercials display.
Little Otik, ultimately, offers a good cinematic experience, even if it could seem to be a little long. Nonetheless, the tale provides excellent cinematography through several close-ups and zooms, which is edited in an occasionally rapid manner. This encourages the audience to pay attention to the events on the screen. There is stop-motion animation, which is a somewhat of a trademark for Jan Svankmajer and can seen in his previous films such as Alice (1988), Faust (1994), and Conspirators of Pleasure (1996). It is this stop-motion animation that brings the lifeless root to life in a very surreal, yet fascinating manner, as the film creates a wonderfully bizarre event that will not be forgotten.
Rating:
Summary: The Svankmajer Touch
Review: Master Czech animator Jan Svankmajer's latest film, Little Otik, is, among other things, a continuation of his fascination with surrealism and food (read: consumption). A 30s-ish woman's complete barrenness makes her extremely despondent until one day, her husband, as a bizarre joke, uproots a tree stump, trims and shapes it to resemble something vaguely human and presents it to her. Immediately identifying it as the baby she can never really have, she takes to it at once, dressing it, talking to it and lavishing so much attention on it that eventually it responds by springing to life. The woman's fanatic obsession with the stump--now called Otanesk (Little Otik)--is so complete that she dedicates all her time to it, at first nursing it and later, realizing that "milk and carrot soup are not enough", spending enormously to buy vast quantities of food to satiate its voracious appetite. Alas, pork, porridge, and other comestibles themselves are still not enough. The mailman disappears. A social worker suffers the same fate. What to do? The wily next door neighbor's daughter (a precocious 11-year old) befriends the by-now gigantic stump and cares for it feeding it what it most craves until--. Well, that's enough of the plot for now. Svankmajer even creates a fairy tale to explain Little Otik's history, illustrated in the flat colorful animation characteristic of the work of early animators from long ago. But aside from these short, intermittent segments and Otanesk's thrashing, the tremendously inventive Svankmajer's forte is not much on display. In addition, at just under a full two hours, the film is somewhat overlong, definitely in need of editing. Yet the trademark Svankmajer focus on the aforementioned food/consumption (see Conspirators of Pleasure, as well as several early short films) is here for sure, as is his obvious delight in surreal images. This is a work for Svankmajer fans as well as those who love the surreal (with more than a dose of the grotesque). For those who prefer more conventional fare, stay clear!
Rating: 
Summary: another Svankmejer masterpiece...
Review: Rivals his "Faustus" but more accessible to a wider audience. The storyline is fairly straightforward: a barren couple somehow transform a wooden tree root into an insatiably ravenous baby-creature which eats everything in sight and keeps getting bigger and bigger.
The subtext, as reflected in among other things the closeups of food going down human throats throughout the movie, is somewhat Buddhist: the little hungry monster is really just a metaphor for that equally bottomless pit of human desire/ego in all of us, which also wishes to gobble up everything it can.
Svankmejer weaves in some deft social satire here, playing on the pathological romanticization of having babies that is especially strong in pre-feminist present-day Czech society but endemic in all societies, a pathological romanticization which becomes obsession and madness when its actualization is thwarted by nature.
Along with Svankmejer's richly imaginative, trademark surrealism there is some beautiful cinematography and stop-animation here which makes this movie as visually fascinating as it is thought-provoking. This man simply has no equal. It is staggering to imagine what he could produce if he had even a fraction of Steven Spielberg or George Luca's resources and top billing---since both of those directors have about a fraction of his talent and vision.
Rating:
Summary: Suspension of Reality
Review: This film suspended reality for me - I was entranced - the stop-motion technique alone lends to the eery feeling little Otesanek brings to the screen. I began to understand this woman's obsession with having a child - and how she would covet this tree trunk... am I mad??? Fabulous recreation of a disturbing fairy tale.
Rating:
Summary: Very well made
Review: unlike most films today, this was a very inventive film. i recommend it to the cinamatically adventurous.
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