Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Review: The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle

Writer/director David Russo's The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle continues the rapid expansion of Seattle's cinematic language we've been witnessing recently.
If the film has a traditional story, it is as follows: a young computer programmer suddenly comes down with an existential crisis, compelling him to bombastically quit his cubicle and get a job a with a corporate custodial service. One of the companies in the office building he cleans tests experimental cookies, to which he becomes addicted. Then things get weird.
The film has just enough brilliant sequences to keep us interested, including a clever riff on the "Flight of the Bumble Bee" scene from A Clockwork Orange, and yet another instance where the mere repetition of the the word fuck equals hilarity (although slicker than the opening of Four Weddings and a Funeral, it is still not as genius as this scene from an early episode of The Wire). But perhaps the most original scene is the first one: a rapid-fire journey following a message in a bottle through the waters of Puget Sound to a pebble beach in Seattle, set to the music of "Awesome", a local band that provides the entire score.
Owing equal debts to both Fight Club and Eraserhead, Russo's film already feels like it has settled comfortably into the cult cannon. The film bastes in macabre corporate satire and nightmarish, Cronenbergian body horror. Additionally, there are enough Snatch-esque quick cuts and spastic splashes of traditional animation and dancing text to satisfy a wide range of arty tastes.

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