This is just a wonderful, charming little film, despite also being dark and at times pretty creepy. I loved the performance of the little girl, not the least reason for which was because I have two sisters around her same age and their cuteness just floors me. It's odd that such a cute little girl would play such an adorable role in a film that includes full frontal (although very, very brief) nudity, as well as the deaths of two people (one of whom is the little girl's mother). Seems like it might have been a little disturbing, but I'm sure they made it a wonderful experience for her.
A man is stuck in traffic on his way home from work, clearly very stressed out from work and, even more, from the horrendous traffic that he is struggling to get through (which I can certainly relate to, living in LA), so he calls home on his car phone and his daughter picks up. He asks if he can talk to mommy, but the little girl says that she is "upstairs with Uncle Wim." He tells her to go tell mommy that he is right outside and will be in in a minute, and of course all sorts of mayhem ensues. Anyway, you know the plot.
What I found most interesting about the movie was the structure of victims vs. people who are to blame, whatever they're called. Anti-victims? The guilty parties, that's what I'll call them. The only victims in this movie are the little girl and the man stuck in traffic (I have sympathy for anyone stuck in traffic, unless I'm in the same traffic jam and they're in front of me. Then I hate them).
Sure, the man in traffic really caused the whole fiasco that occurs in the movie, but he really made an honest mistake and, rendering him a victim, has to live with it for the rest of his life. A simple wrong number cost two people their lives and a little girl her mother and, apparently, her uncle, with whom her mother was having an affair. Still not sure what to make of that little situation.
Unfortunately, the movie is really just a film version of that old joke who called home, talked to the little kid, asked for mommy, was told that she was upstairs with the plumber or the cable guy or Uncle Wim or whatever, and told the kid to go in and blah blah blah and they freak out and jump off the roof or fall down the stairs or whatever and die and oops it was a wrong number. It's one of those jokes that starts circulating around freshman or sophomore year in high school. Where I grew up, anyway.
But even though the subject matter is not very original, it still works very well as a quick little thriller, and the performances are outstanding throughout, even from the mother and Uncle Wim, who appear only very briefly. In a perfect world, there would also be a way to recognize the actors in short films, because I think that the man in traffic and the little girl both deserved recognition for their outstanding work, although for a seven minute film, an Academy Award is certainly a high honor. Definitely worth seeing, but I have to agree that This Charming Man deserved the Oscar over this one.
0 out of 1 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink