King Size

A Polish comedy from 1988 that won awards at film festivals and has a really good IMDB rating, but most of the few reviews complain that it is not funny and involves toilet humor. What's going on?

I don't speak Polish, so I had to rely on the subtitles. I also didn't grow up in a socialist country, but as someone who grew up in a West German family with contacts to East Germany, it seems I have enough of a cultural affinity to this film to really enjoy it.

The main premise of this film: Hidden in the basement of a Polish library, there is a society of tiny dwarfs, all male, living on the trash of the 'king sized' normal human society. This premise has a lot of potential for funny scenes, and the film makes full use of it. We see ordinary objects such as safety pins and egg slicers in a completely new light.

The dwarfs have certain magic abilities, but that's not very important for the plot. What really matters is the secret 'king size' formula for a potion that enables the dwarfs to temporarily become citizens of the normal world. And meet women! Much like was the case with Sexmission (1984) four years earlier (a film that is actually alluded to in a dialog), there is potential for a sex comedy here, which is used only to a very limited extent. The toilet humor that one reviewer objected to similarly is present but is not overdone to the point that it's fair to complain about it.

The film's political dimension is obvious to me, so it must certainly have been obvious to contemporary Polish audiences -- and censors. It is amazing that such a film was already possible at the time. It came out in the year before the fall of the Iron Curtain.

The dwarf king suppresses his subjects in much the same well-intentioned style in which socialist governments dealt with their populations. A few subjects get the privilege of temporarily leaving the kingdom and enjoying the wonders of the king sized world. However, if they don't use the trick of drinking a certain capitalist wonder potion, they must return.

The film's allegorical dimension becomes completely transparent when the happy end suddenly turns into a nasty surprise.

Toilet humour, Jerzy Stuhr in the same clothes (!?) as in "Deja Vu", unfunny and stupid sexual innuendoes, repetitive running about, shallow dialogues, cheap costumes, etc. It's simply remarkable how low the director of "Deja Vu" (a masterpiece in comedy genre) went here. To use his own imagery of this one, he went down the toilet.

It's got a potential (the story, the dialogues and action scenes could have been done so much better), but all we have is a kind of unfunny freaky story for adults (though, without proper adult material as well). What audience was this piece of trash made for? A rhetorical question it is.

A bizarre notion was in my mind after watching the immortal "Deja Vu", that Juliusz Machulski was a genius. Now it's clearly seen that he is not. A genius would not have done such a tasteless "parable".

It simply does not deserve more than a 2 out of 10 (do not trust the high mark on IMDb). Thanks for attention.

I don't know what it is about Communism and its impact on Polish minds, but any art influenced by a hatred of it comes out awesome. Kingsajz (King Size) is another one of Machulski's satirical masterpieces. Though this movie is brilliant and slightly eerie without any background info, the insider jokes, mainly made at the expense of, you guessed it, the much hated Communist regime, will make you laugh. The movie takes absurd ideas, like soda that is actual a secret formula for un-shrinking, and little people living in a room stacked with old card catalogs, and puts them together into a philosophical movie with a very cliche yet disturbing ending.

I always wondered what good could be found in this absolute flop of Juliusz Machulski? Well, if you say this film is a satire on the Polish Communist years, then, the question easily arises why more than 50 % of Poles still recollect the Soviet years with a great warmth and nostalgia? Let's put the political problems aside. The movie, then. It is a shame to have made such a shallow and humorless try in the style of Monty Python but with much more cynical (and not funny) sexual innuendos, with less humor and less tact. The top (or, rather, the bottom) of this vapid film is the moment when a dwarfish man get into a female vagina and thus gives her gratification. This borders on with the pornography and leaved you with a deep disgust. I only may ask why such a talented director made such a bad and senseless work?