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Movies / Upcoming / Otto; Or, Up with Dead People
Otto; Or, Up with Dead People

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Otto; Or, Up with Dead People (2008)

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Reviews Counted:17

Fresh:6

Rotten:11

Average Rating:4.8/10

Runtime: 1 hr 35 mins

Genre: Comedies

US Box Office: $0

Synopsis: Otto is a handsome, sensitive, neo-Goth zombie with an identity crisis. He looks and smells like a zombie but isn't certain that he is one. He wanders the streets of the city, never sleeping, until... Otto is a handsome, sensitive, neo-Goth zombie with an identity crisis. He looks and smells like a zombie but isn't certain that he is one. He wanders the streets of the city, never sleeping, until one day--as he is being harassed by hooligans--he ducks into an alley and spots a poster announcing auditions for a zombie film. He soon meets aspiring filmmaker/revolutionary Medea Yarn, who is convinced that Otto, as a confused zombie, is the perfect embodiment of the effects of advanced capitalism on individuals. Medea begins to make a film about Otto, while simultaneously shooting a film about a gay zombie revolt against consumerist society. After moving in with an actor, Otto begins to remember fragments of his pre-zombie life with a sweet boyfriend. As Medea directs the final, orgiastic scene of her gay zombie film, Otto struggles to access the human emotions buried beneath his zombie exterior. Otto; or, Up with Dead People is a clever modern fable about alienation and the problems created by a mass-produced society, where even the members most on the fringe find it hard to resist being pulled into the mainstream. Toying with genre conventions, combining different media, and making use of Medea's often-humorous films-within-the-film, Bruce LaBruce creates a new, sexy, hyperpoliticized zombie mythology. -- © Sundance Film Festival [More]

Starring: Jey Crisfar, Gio Black Peter, Katharina Klewinghaus, Marcel Schlutt

Starring: Jey Crisfar, Gio Black Peter, Katharina Klewinghaus, Marcel Schlutt, Susanne Sachsse

Director: Bruce LaBruce

Director: Bruce LaBruce
Screenwriter: Bruce LaBruce
Producer: Robert Bruning, Bruce LaBruce, Jorn Hartmann, Jennifer Jonas, Michael Huber
Composer: Mikael Karlsson
Studio: Strand Releasing

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Reviews for Otto; Or, Up with Dead People

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1 - 17 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
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Concessions to the audience's expectations certainly make Otto a more palatable viewing experience, but they also make it seem less dangerous.

Full Review Source: MovieMartyr.com | comment Comment
02/15/09
Jeremy Heilman
Jeremy Heilman
MovieMartyr.com

Sadly, this is one of those moments where I have to scan my reviewer's list of dismissive nouns to come up with the perfect word to describe this mess. Ah, yes, here it is: claptrap.

Full Review Source: Filmcritic.com | comment Comment
02/11/09
Don Willmott
Don Willmott
Filmcritic.com

Moviegoers with a LaBruce fetish will appreciate another imaginative offering from the filmmaker. Mainstream audiences should stay far, far away.

Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | comment Comment
01/16/09
Peter Hartlaub
Peter Hartlaub
San Francisco Chronicle

Otto deliriously intermingles sex and entrails but is also imaginative and witty

Full Review Source: Los Angeles Times | comment Comment
12/05/08
Kevin Thomas
Kevin Thomas
Los Angeles Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

LaBruce's film is such a riot of conflicting information and signifying styles that inner logic never really gets a grip.

Full Review Source: Los Angeles Daily News | comment Comment
12/05/08
Bob Strauss
Bob Strauss
Los Angeles Daily News

Some have described this as more cohesive than most Bruce La Bruce movies, but it's still sophomoric junk.

Full Review Source: Film Journal International | comment Comment
11/10/08
David Noh
David Noh
Film Journal International

LaBruce devotees will be tickled pink; others will be perplexed and/or disgusted.

Full Review Source: New York Post | comment Comment
11/07/08
V.A. Musetto
V.A. Musetto
New York Post

One of the more disciplined entries in the LaBruce oeuvre, Otto is sexy and silly in just the right proportions, a cult item with a real heart.

Full Review Source: New York Times | comment Comment
11/07/08
Nathan Lee
Nathan Lee
New York Times
Top Critic Icon Top Critic

Calling a zombie movie lifeless is bad enough. But when the charge is leveled at a gay zombie movie by Bruce LaBruce, queer cinema’s most radical fairy, the disappointment cuts that much deeper.

Full Review Source: Time Out New York | comment Comment
11/05/08
Melissa Anderson
Melissa Anderson
Time Out New York

Campy but not comical, reactionary but not very clever, LaBruce's film is best saved for those tickled by the sight of homo-zombie orgies or the hardcore penetration of an open wound.

Full Review Source: Village Voice | comment Comment
11/05/08
Aaron Hillis
Aaron Hillis
Village Voice

For a movie with this many ideological loose ends, Otto comes up with a convincingly sweet resolution.

Full Review Source: Slant Magazine | comment Comment
11/02/08
Eric Henderson
Eric Henderson
Slant Magazine

Veers between raw zombie cuisine, raw gay porn, high calorie sex that includes entrails-devouring as foreplay, and cranky anti-establishment rants against advanced capitalism. Not to mention that it's hard out there for a zombie too.

Full Review Source: NewsBlaze | comment Comment
11/01/08
Prairie Miller
Prairie Miller
NewsBlaze

When the viscera and seminal fluids are cleared away, there is something less flagrant but more durable resembling a beating heart inside this bloody stump of a movie -- a coded message to do with loneliness and loss.

Full Review Source: Boxoffice Magazine | comment Comment
10/31/08
Ray Greene
Ray Greene
Boxoffice Magazine

Bruce La Bruce's latest offering is a deadly affair of heavily politicized metaphors that overflows with imagination, angst and a smattering of good old fashioned porn.

Full Review Source: JWR | comment Comment
05/02/08
S. James Wegg
S. James Wegg
JWR

A genuinely touching horror-porn movie.

Full Review Source: Shadows on the Wall | comment Comment
04/20/08
Rich Cline
Rich Cline
Shadows on the Wall

Click to read the article

Full Review Source: Film Threat | comment Comment
01/29/08
Film Threat

Canadian queer-cinema provocateur Bruce LaBruce continues his trademark blend of sexual explicitness and shoddy technique with his numbing necro-porno, Otto; or, Up With Dead People.

Full Review Source: Variety | comment Comment
01/28/08
Justin Chang
Justin Chang
Variety
Top Critic Icon Top Critic
 
 
1 - 17 (sorted by date; Australian critics are listed first)
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February 13, 2009: Veers between raw zombie cuisine, raw gay porn, high calorie sex that includes entrails-devouring as foreplay, and cranky anti-establishment rants against advanced capitalism. Not to mention that it's hard out there for a zombie too. Opens in new window
More...

February 08, 2009: Veers between raw zombie cuisine, raw gay porn, high calorie sex that includes entrails-devouring as foreplay, and cranky anti-establishment rants against advanced capitalism. Not to mention that it's hard out there for a zombie too. Opens in new window
More...

November 01, 2008: Veers between raw zombie cuisine, raw gay porn, high calorie sex that includes entrails-devouring as foreplay, and cranky anti-establishment rants against advanced capitalism. Not to mention that it's hard out there for a zombie too. Opens in new window
More...

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