The Phone Book (2008)

“The book was better” – Critic

Number of Times Seen – 1 (16 Dec 2015)

Brief Synopsis – A love story about two lonely people in LA told solely by the use of quotes from the phone book.

My Take on it – This is my final of 3 reviews of Kurt Kuenne’s short films.

The idea here is quite simple but exptremely clever because there is no real dialogue; the characters only utter lines that can be found in the phone book whether they be name, addresses, phone numbers or quotes from ads.

This “gimmick” works well throughout the movie because it proves that everything really exists within the covers of the phone book.

I loved how once again Kuenne was able to have some of his characters from previous short films show up in this one despite the “somewhat” limited dialogue and script.

I wonder how long Kuenne and his team spent scouring the phone book looking for the perfect lines to use here.

At 22 minutes, this might have been slightly too long, but there were very few (if any) lulls in the storyline and overall it works very well; sometimes to the point where you forget that everything is coming from a phone book.

That in my book, helps this movie to be even more enjoyable than one would think possible.

Here’s a link to the film on youtube. Check it out

 

Bottom Line – Very intriguing and clever idea that works almost over the entire 22 minutes. Kuenne recurring characters once again pleasantly show up unexpectedly. Possibly a bit too long, but in general the idea constantly works even to a point where the viewer might occasionally forget the gimmick. Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – First-ever film adaptation of the world’s most widely owned book, the telephone directory (From KurtKuenne.com)

Rating – Globe Worthy

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