Cuckoo Review

[Westside Steve]

Cuckoo

Weltkino Verleijh

R.                              103 min

I won't call him out by name but a close friend of mine nice guy, family man, great musician and fellow Canton Aultman Hospital alumni told me that he'd seen a film called CUCKOO and that he really liked it.

He also said it was really weird which should have been a red flag, except for the fact that I've seen a lot of weird things that were great. Frankly gang if I ever get around to writing a book entitled Weird Movies That Were Great this one will absolutely not be in there. As with so many European, here German, films there's a big drop off between the professional cinematic polish that United States films usually have. That doesn't mean that good acting can't Elevate one to the stratosphere, it can. Too bad this one didn't have any great actors. Or a great script or story. But to give my buddy credit yes, it was weird.

CUCKOO also boasts an array of qualities that seem specific to European/German/Swedish films. The most irksome to me is too many subtitles. I hate them because I can't read them. Besides looking as though it was shot with a 16 mm handheld camera the actors all seemed to have a vaguely unkempt look dressed in what appear to be Goodwill clothing. Maybe that's just the way they dress over there. A sullen 17 year old girl gets a job working the desk at some sort of Resort/ Laboratory  in which one of the main requirements is that she not leave or arrive  after dark. Of course there's something weird about that right? Of course she's a teenager and of course teenagers hate to follow the rules, so she takes her bicycle home after dusk and is pursued by a surrealistic crazy woman and just barely makes her escape. We don't know what the crazy woman is up to but it is eventually revealed that there is some sort of insane laboratory experiment/ cult thing going on.  Her parents as well as everyone else associated with this madhouse seem to be involved to some extent or another. I'm not going to give away the plot but I will tell you one of the key pieces of evidence, a book entitled Cuckoo. Either we never covered the Cuckoo's mating habits or I paid little attention in biology class but it appears that the female bird lays her eggs in other birds nests and then bails on it leaving other birds to raise the Cuckoo's children as their own. That's the only clue I will give you. The rest of the movie is frenetic nonsense and indecipherable characters. But when the hook is revealed you will be at least a little bit surprised but certainly not enough to make this movie going experience worthwhile, at least for me.

D+

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