Movie Review: Gizmo! by shoutingatco.ws

The snooze-proof collar, to help typists

Gizmo! is a wonderful documentary. It’s a compilation of inventions from the 1930s to 1950s, all of which, to put it mildly… failed.

There are demonstrations from earnest besuited folk, showing how they’ll change the world by flying. Crash tests from the inventor of the elastic car bumper. Massive, Spice Girls-esque shoes for basketball players. A tractor tied to a bit of string that’ll cut crops into circles. If there’s footage of someone trying, but not quite getting it right, it’s here.

The film is respectful of them for trying, not outright hurring at a doofus that believes strapping wings to their arms will turn them into a bird. There’s a good ol’ sense of “may as well give it a go”.

From the incomprehensible intro, to the catchy songs written especially for the film, you’ll love it from start to finish.

Honestly, listen to the introduction. Is it English? Is it garbled? We’ll never know, but we bloody love it. And if you can sit through the whole thing without catching yourself singing the Benjamin Lee song, you’re a stronger person than us.

Yankee Doodle Scary

It’s not just a bunch of inventors. These are people who’ve pushed the human body to its limits, for seemingly no reason. Want to see a chap being jumped on by a bunch of soldiers? A woman swing across Times Square on a zip line – suspended by her teeth? Or a slightly eerie-looking chap who has perfected (almost) playing Yankee Doodle Dandy via the medium of hand-farting? This is the place.

You can watch insane footage of a swimming pool from Hungary that miraculously dry-cleans your clothes – you walk out of it as though you’d walked through a pool of nothing. It’s a secret that’s so good, the Hungarians have kept it to themselves to this day.

Imagine if Dragons’ Den was hosted by Fern Britton and a cuddling machine. That’s the nice feeling that Gizmo! gives you inside. Yes, it’s a documentary from the 1970s, but more importantly, it’s a celebration of things that are a little bit crap. And for that, we salute them.

Comments

Leave a Reply