...starring Thomas Hobbes as "The Leaf"

My friend Megan and I caught the most peculiar short film the other night thru On Demand. It was a Korean claymation film that dealt with finding out what your purpose in the world is and coming to terms with it, asking yourself "Is there a God, and if so, why did he make me, me?"

It was also about poo.


Doggy Poo tells the story of young Doggy Poo, the "worst kind of poo there is" according to a pile of "soil" on the side of the road. I say it with quotes because, despite the fact that the film insists on referring to him as soil, you can't hide the fact that he fell off the back of an ox cart full of manure. Hell, the guy has a peanut sticking out of his chin! Why the producers had a problem with this, but making the childlike lead a piece of dog crap is beyond me. But I digress...

Doggy Poo has the emotional tempermant of a Lifetime Movie, and cries every few minutes about the slightest events (not the best character trait when he gets so damn attached to every fleeting thing that comes along.) He first meets "The Soil" who basically tells him how much he sucks, that he is a piece of shit (literally) but then feels bad, apologizes, and begins to bemoan his OWN fate, saying how once the ox cart comes back, he'll be run over and die. Particularly moving is how The Soil recalls how he once wished death on the pepper plants living above him, who then subsequently die (damn you, The Soil!!). The Soil is pratically wishing for his end, yet when the cart comes back, the farmer somehow recognizes The Soil, saying "This soil looks like it came from my farm. It must have fallen off the back of my cart!" (exact quote). He then proceeds to pick up the manure from the side of the road with his BARE HANDS and puts it back on the cart. The Soil/Manure thing can't understand how he's not dead, and moves on, to hell with Doggy Poo (it should be noted at this point that The Soil had the voice of an old southern black man, and spoke in such a slow drawl, he quickly became my favorite character...and the most quotable.)

Well, shit. I was hooked at this point. This was too unintentionally funny not to finish.

As the rest of the film proceeds, Doggy Poo meets a leaf that's almost dead, blowing along in the late fall. Poo remembers The Soil (honest to God, they flashback to scenes we saw about six minutes earlier, and show them in B&W for added effect. CLASSIC!). The wind picks up, and The Poo and The Leaf re-enact the end of Titanic by yelling "Don't leave me!" (unintentional puns galore , too)...and the Poo cries some more. Winter comes and goes, and we then learn that the most insulting thing you can call a chicken is a "walking bird". Apparantly, the Doggy Poo isn't even good enough for the chicken and her chicks to eat (even after the Poo all but says "Eat me!").

Eventually, Doggy Poo learns that his destiny, his role, the reason God himself put him on Earth (seriously, they said it was God's will) was to make crazy whoopee with a dandelion weed to make a beautiful dandelion "flower" (it's a weed, goddamnit!). The last time we see Doggy Poo, it's raining and he's in the sweet embrace of Dandelion, a scene that would be repeated in many John Cusack films.

I really cannot effectively convey just how funny this film was. A child does the voices of Doggy Poo, it had the most serious composed score and soundtrack, a song over the credits, and they even superimposed the face of The Soil over the sky at the end (having him repeat one of his lines about how God put Doggy Poo on Earth, but he still had to discover his destiny, or something equally cryptic). Not the intention of the filmmakers, I'm sure, but I'm also sure I wasn't the intended audience (probably 3 year old Korean kids who don't want to potty train).This flick probably hit the festival circuit, trying to win awards , yet all I could do was MSTie it. (C'mon, when they showed The Soil in flashback, I had to say to Megan "Hey! It's Soil! Remember him? He was the best...")

Oh yeah...it was also based on a book!