Lemonade Joe

Well, now I know where Guy Maddin gets his forced whimsy. Feels like people must like it just because it is a New Wave Czech Western Musical photographed like a silent film.

A zany, funny western spoof (complete with musical numbers) and good satire of commercialism. I've personally never seen anything like it, where the righteous, clean-cut good-guy turns out to have his own selfish motives. The antics never failed to entertain, but the satire did get old after a while, and ended really anti-climactically (probably it meant to). The funniest scene for me was the crazy, over-the-top barroom brawl.

A great Czech western/musical parody.

A little of this silliness goes a long way, and in that respect this probably outstays it's welcome somewhat, but at least it's never less than entertaining. As surreal Czech New Wave films go, i actually prefer this overall to, say, Daisies. It's still predictably political on a certain level (anti-Capitalist i assume/think?) but never less than ambiguously/absurdly so. The Guy Maddin comparisons are well founded, imagine him doing a Western parody/homage and you're not too far off.

Lemonade Joe is an admirably creative, surreal western parody that gleefully satirises American consumerism while nonetheless demonstrating an ample affection for the genre and its many conventions. The goofy characters, zany editing and colour tinting grant it a uniquely absurd charm, and though it loses considerable steam in the second half, there's more than enough silliness in every scene to keep tedium at bay.

I was really on board on this at first, but it loses steam at a rapid pace and towards the end I really struggled to focus or care about it. The blackface scenes midway through do not help of course. There's some really fun scenes before that however and the silent film visuals kept me entertained for most of it.