8/10
clever exercise in writing and directing; too bad the director's 1st feature wasn't its equal
4 January 2006
After having watched the absolutely worthless faux-horror movie Cry_Wolf by the director of this short, none of us who saw it had any high hopes for this, which is included as an extra on the DVD along with another shot by the director.

However, this short is quite entertaining and clever!

The bizarre framing device, narrated by Kevin Spacey, involves the proverbial roomful of monkeys at typewriters. Several different story lines then begin, with the same dialogue being repeated in each of them by different people in different contexts. Inevitably, the story lines begin to intertwine.

"Oh my God!" says the woman who finds herself pregnant. "Oh my God!" says the horny virgin, finding an adult ad he likes, and so on. At times, however, entire exchanges of dialogue repeat themselves in the different scenes. I think that could have been tricky to come up with a script in which that would work, and have it still work when shot, but it did.

I was reminded a bit of the assignment the TV show Project Greenlight gives prospective directors. They had given a script with dialogue that didn't make a whole lot of sense without context, and the directors had to shoot something using that dialogue which would give some meaning to it.

Anyway, while I can't recommend Cry_Wolf at all, the two shorts on its DVD are worth checking out, should you get the chance.
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