In "Czech Dream," shoppers eager for bargains at the opening of a new store find out they've been duped by two film students.
(Getty)
Movie Review
In 2003, two Czech film students, Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda, showed what wild and crazy guys they were by setting up an elaborate hoax. They commissioned an ad campaign for a new hypermarket, called Czech Dream, which was to open on May 31.
That morning, more than 1,000 shoppers showed up, eager to get the bargains they'd seen promised on television and in fliers. Instead, they found a 26-foot-by-80-foot piece of scaffolding covered by a Czech Dream banner. Some in the crowd were amused, most were angry. Viewers of the film Klusak and Remunda made about the stunt - called, not surprisingly, "Czech Dream" - will likely just be bored.
Klusak and Remunda saw their prank as a sendup of consumerism, as well as a cautionary tale about the power of advertising and part of the debate over the Czech Republic's proposed entry into the European Union (hypermarkets seeming much more EU than Czech). A more accurate way to describe the young men's accomplishment would be as an incredible stroke of grant-proposal luck (funding came from the Czech ministry of culture) and sophomorically obtuse mean-spiritedness. Let's encourage people to make fools of themselves - then mock them when they act foolishly!
There is certainly a kernel of wit in "Czech Dream." One can imagine Albert Brooks having a field day with something like Klusak and Remunda's conceit in one of his "Saturday Night Live" shorts from 30 years ago. Of course, the film would have been 80 minutes shorter, and Brooks would have recognized that for the joke to work he'd need to be the butt of it rather than the consumers.
As it is, the single funny thing in "Czech Dream" - and it's truly hilarious - is the sight of dozens of company logos at the end of the credits crawl in acknowledgment of their cooperation with the filming and/or their products' presence in the movie. Could it be that Klusak and Remunda are at last telling a joke on themselves, or are they simply too dense to recognize the irony?
Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.
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