A
little boy named Sonny falls asleep while his mother reads him a bedtime
story. He then sleepwalks into an
oversized book of fairy tales and winds up in a parade balloon warehouse where
he meets (among other things) talking balloons, watches ballerinas, and participates
in a western square dance. Sonny soon
finds himself out on the street watching a very long Christmas parade full of
odd balloons, floats, and (too many) marching bands.
Fun
in Balloon Land is a very strange ‘60s oddity that seems to be made for
children, but in reality, it’s stealth propaganda for balloon manufacturer
Giant Balloon Parades, Inc. Although it’s
less than an hour long, it feels much longer than that. It’s pretty terrible in just about every way
imaginable, and yet there are so many weird and disturbing images here that
it’s hard to look away.
The
most uncomfortable moment comes when Sonny is running around the “underwater”
section of the balloon warehouse where he encounters a giant talking
lobster. What makes this scene upsetting
isn’t the constant sound of water gurgling on the soundtrack to remind us we’re
underwater (although no attempt was made to represent it visually). What’s disturbing is the fact that Sonny is
wearing very tight, very short gold lame shorts, and nothing else the entire
time.
Most
of the running time is devoted to the parade scene. Here, a drunk sounding woman with a thick
Philly accent narrates the action, recites nursery rhymes, and hurls out
perplexing non-sequiturs as the parade goes by.
Imagine watching a dime store version of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
narrated by your drunk aunt and you might have some idea of what to
expect. Then again, that still might not
be enough to prepare you for such WTF floats as “The Marrying Turkey”.
Speaking
of which, yes, Fun in Balloon Land is a turkey all right, but it’s not one I’ll
forget any time soon.
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