Rijndri
Load of rubbish!!
CrawlerChunky
In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.
Curapedi
I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
Darin
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
bensonmum2
One Got Fat is a bicycle safety video. In the short, a group of "kids" plan to ride their bikes nine blocks for a picnic. One kid has a large basket – big enough to hold everyone's lunch. The title refers to the one kid who actually made it to the picnic without having an accident or something else stop him. He ate all the lunches and got fat. The children who don't make it to the picnic are all dressed in monkey masks. The moral is don't be a monkey – practice safety when riding your bike.One Got Fat is especially creepy and dark. The frozen-face monkey masks are the stuff of nightmares. It doesn't help that just before each child has an accident, their eyes bulge out of the mask. It's quite a sight. As for dark, the whole premise of the video is that nine kids don't make it to the picnic. They're hit by cars, run over by road equipment, slam into pedestrian, or suffer some other horrifying accident. All the while, we hear the bright, chipper voice of Edward Everett Horton narrating events. Horton's melodious style is a stark contrast to the images on the screen. It's a bizarre experience. Was One Got Fat effective? Yes. While it may take it's time getting the message out, I don't think anyone who watches this would forget basic bicycle safety. Was One Got Fat entertaining? In a weird way, it was. It's not a laugh a minute, but it's hard to turn away from the surrealistic images on-screen. I'm giving it an 8/10.
Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"One Got Fat" is a 15-minute live action short film from over 50 years ago that could be called an educational movie on how to ride your bike properly by some and complete garbage by others. This was made five years before the classic "Planet of the Apes", but this is a bit of "Planet of the Apes on Bikes". I guessed this was inspired by the feature film, which would at least give an explanation for the ridiculous masks, but nope it wasn't. I cannot take this little film seriously, I wonder if the writer was on drugs when he came up with it. The writer and director is Dale Jennings and unsurprisingly this is the only credit in his filmography. The narrator is probably the only somewhat known cast member as he (Edward Everett Horton) has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The only reason why this little movie does not have a terrible IMDb rating as some other educational films from that era is probably that it wasn't spoofed by MST3000, which shows how most people are not really capable of making their own opinion without watching the embarrassing MST3k guys. I myself did not enjoy this movie. It's probably a blast when you're on mushrooms, but only then. Not recommended.
dmanyc
ONE GOT FAT. That's the name of this very strange educational short film from the '60s. From the title alone, you wouldn't know it was suppose to be an educational short film on bicycle safety. After watching it (either by itself or RiffTrax), you still won't see it as an educational short film. You'll see it as the weirdest short film since Mr. B Natural. These monkeys make the PLANET OF THE APES apes look normal in comparison. Creepiest. Masks. Ever. No, this is not suppose to be a horror short, but if I was a kid watching this, I'd have nightmares for days or never step foot in a zoo ever again.Rooty = stopped making hand signals Tink = forgot to watch street signsFloog = riding on the left side of the street Mossby = too distracted to get license and registration and lost his bike Slim = riding on Trigby's bike Trigby = blocked by Slim's body and both fell in manholeNel = riding on sidewalk and running into pedestrians Filbert = riding bike that's falling apart and no brakes Stan = riding with no lights nor reflectors Orv = not a monkey; gets fatDon't say you weren't warned. The five stars is for RiffTrax for their great riffing of this.
la_cultura
This short film was narrated by the same guy that did "Fractured Fairy Tales" on Rocky and Bullwinkle. That's about as far as the whole "kids' short" thing goes.I saw this film a couple of times as a primary school student in Cortland, NY, around 1975-1978, and here it is now (2006) and it still gives me the creeps. If its goal was to teach bike safety, all it really succeeded in doing was to scare the bloody heck out of me and make me never want to go near a bicycle (or any lower primates) ever again. The blithe, almost gleeful, manner in which these lawbreaking bike-riders meet their bloody fates is slightly beyond macabre and and just short of satanic. For two of the ill-fated ape-boys, just before they are bumped off, they are shown with a look of horror on their faces with their eyes bulging out in panic -- not unlike you might see in a Ren and Stimpy cartoon -- except that here it is unexpected because of the low production values (special effects? in a 1963 bike safety flick?) and because it is unexpected and not for comic effect, and it is just a few frames - the image is almost subliminal. Very haunting. The end result, if you're a single-digit age viewer of a bygone era (pre Grand-Theft-Auto, etc...) such a thing might just scare the bejeezus out of you.In historical retrospect, it joins such classics as the 60s and 70s anti-drug scare films common to grade school health classes, and such foot-tapping Drivers Ed classics like Crimson Asphalt.