The puppet animation feature KOOKY (or KUKI SE VRACÍ/KUKY RETURNS), hailing from the Czech Republic, was made in 2010 by the Oscar winning Jan Sverák. The fact that it isn’t better known is due most likely to what, commercially speaking, is the film’s biggest drawback: its orientation. KOOKY is a kid’s movie in most respects, yet it has more in common with grown-up animated fare like THE SECRET ADVENTURES OF TOM THUMB and the films of Sverák’s fellow countryman Jan Svankmajer.
That is-it-or-isn’t-it conundrum appears to have cost the film dearly in much of the western world, the US in particular, where categorization is very important, and where KOOKY, over a decade after its completion, remains unreleased (an officially sanctioned YouTube posting aside). The film was, however, quite successful in Japan, where KOOKY merchandise continues to proliferate.
The live action set-up involves Ondra, a young asthmatic boy, having his beloved Kooky, a cheaply made pink (although Kooky claims to be red) teddy bear, thrown out by his mother. Ondra ventures outside that night to rescue Kooky from the trash, which makes him ill, and leads to an extended fever dream in which Kooky gets deposited in the dump, where he comes to life.
Wanting to be reunited with Ondra, Kooky enters a miniature universe of sentient paper bags and forest-dwelling creatures. This place is set in the real world but has an infrastructure all its own, complete with makeshift huts and scrap metal-constructed automobiles. Kooky teams up with a creature named Captain Goddamn, who’s fallen afoul of the evil Nushka and the aptly named Bagman, who are looking to take over the forest.
As Kooky ’s adventures grow steadily wilder so does Ondra, back in the real world, grow steadily sicker. This affects his fantasy world, which is darkened up greatly in depictions of Captain Goddamn shut up in a plastic bottle with a flame held up to its outside and Kuky losing all his stuffing. The only way for things to get better is, obviously, for Ondra’s health to improve, and there’s no guarantee it will.
The fact that Jan Sverák is not known for puppet fantasy films (the closest he’s come to such fare was in the 1988 horror-themed short OIL GOBBLERS and fantastic 1994 feature ACCUMULATOR 1) works to KOOKY’S advantage. It utilizes natural lighting amid real locations (unlike most puppet movies, which tend to be situated in carefully controlled indoor soundstages), into which the puppet protagonists fit quite well. It helps that Sverák depicts his non-human characters with a full cinematic vocabulary (meaning the staticy camerawork and overreliance on close ups that mar most such films are nowhere to be found here), complimenting a script that alternates moments of hilarity, horror (particularly in the abovementioned bottle torture scene) and pathos, all of it pulled off with a surfeit of standard kid movie mawkishness.
A frequent criticism has been with the flatness of the dialogue readings, which rarely rise above monotone level. I, however, say the frank and unaffected readings—chiefly by Sverák’s screenwriter father Zdenek Sverák and his son Ondrej (who also plays Ondra)—are effective, enhancing the surreality of a film that works primarily because, unlike most kid movies the world over, it doesn’t over-dramatize or coddle its characters, much less its audience.
Vital Statistics
KOOKY (KUKI SE VRACÍ)
Biograf Jan Sverak/ Ceská Televize/ Phoenix Film Investments/U.F.O. Pictures
Director: Jan Sverák
Producer: Eric Abraham, Jan Sverák
Screenplay: Jan Sverák
Cinematography: Mark Bliss, Vladimír Smutný
Editing: Alois Fisárek
Cast: Zdenek Sverák, Ondrej Sverák, Jirí Machácek, Petr Ctvrtnícek, Jirí Lábus, Ondrej Vetchý, Ondrej Vetchý, Václav Postránecký, Miroslav Táborský, Pavel Liska, Kristýna Fuitová Nováková, Filip Capka, Oldrich Kaiser, Vasil Fridrich, Helena Hrubantová