Eye For Film >> Movies >> The Town Of The One-Handed (2003) Film Review
The Town Of The One-Handed
Reviewed by: Angus Wolfe Murray
Here is a great idea and here's how to make the least of it.
Everyone has one arm in the town of the one-handed and they are perfectly content with their lives. One day, a brave man purchases an arm from a second-hand shop and soon the others follow.
What can you do with two hands that you can't do with one?
Hundreds of things.
What, for example?
Play ragtime on the piano. Wash dishes better. Pick up children.
It makes the people of the town unhappy and they fight between themselves. They blame the new (second-hand) limbs and so tear them off in a desperate to regain their disability.
Is writer/director Heli Ellis talking about the envy that feeds the god of Me More? Is consumerism the arm that never was?
Animation is basic and unoriginal, although the colouring is good. The storyline leaves two threads untied. Why is more worse? Why does two equaly trouble?
Perhaps, with both hands, you are self-sufficient, when, with one, you rely on each other.
Reviewed on: 12 Feb 2004