"Fried Barry" is a South African live action short film from 2017, so this one is now seven years old or maybe already a decade if you get here a little later to read this review of mine. It is, according to imdb, in the English language, but there are no spoken lines in here, so you can watch it no matter which languages you (don't) speak. Or better don't watch it, which is my suggestion as you can already see from my rating, but I will get to that a little later. The writer and director is Ryan Kruger, who is fairly experienced in both fields and also a prolific actor, so he is far from a rookie and also was not a rookie back in 2017, which makes it especially disappointing how this turned out. Lack of experience is not a factor here. There is only one actor here and this would be Gary Green. He plays the title character, a man who is not young anymore, but in decent physical shape overall judging from his looks and he also has long hair. The camera is on him from beginning to end, sometimes we only see his face or head, sometimes the entire body. Apparently in the beginning there is some kind of substance abuse going on early on as we see he is injected something or at least something is added to his body. The consequence is basically the man's reaction to what is now in his bloodstream and this the entire four minutes. Or rather three minutes and forty-five seconds. I am glad it was this short.
I would not even blame the actor here. The material/writing was just so poor that no actor could have turned it into a good watch I would say. You can blame him though for playing this same uninteresting character in more short films, although I must add that there was a feature film made circling around Fried Barry and I just hope this was better and explained a bit more then. From what I have seen here, however, I have no intention to watch those over 1.5 hours or so. What maybe stayed slightly in the mind here was the out-of-body experience towards the end, but not because it was really good, but just not as forgettable as everything before that. Oh and when the credits roll in, Kruger does not call it a film or project or release on the screen, but a "thing". First time I read it, but as I in a way connect motion pictures to quality, even if strictly-speaking it is just a technical term, I like the idea of not calling this one here a film or motion picture. I give it a big thumbs-down and recommend everybody to stay far, far away from it. It is a bit self-explanatory that it has almost no views on Youtube. I am still clueless how/why this was turned into a full feature a few years later, but oh well, maybe there is a fanbase that helped with the funding. Doesn't matter though as today we are only talking about the short film that started it all and I give it a massively negative recommendation.
I would not even blame the actor here. The material/writing was just so poor that no actor could have turned it into a good watch I would say. You can blame him though for playing this same uninteresting character in more short films, although I must add that there was a feature film made circling around Fried Barry and I just hope this was better and explained a bit more then. From what I have seen here, however, I have no intention to watch those over 1.5 hours or so. What maybe stayed slightly in the mind here was the out-of-body experience towards the end, but not because it was really good, but just not as forgettable as everything before that. Oh and when the credits roll in, Kruger does not call it a film or project or release on the screen, but a "thing". First time I read it, but as I in a way connect motion pictures to quality, even if strictly-speaking it is just a technical term, I like the idea of not calling this one here a film or motion picture. I give it a big thumbs-down and recommend everybody to stay far, far away from it. It is a bit self-explanatory that it has almost no views on Youtube. I am still clueless how/why this was turned into a full feature a few years later, but oh well, maybe there is a fanbase that helped with the funding. Doesn't matter though as today we are only talking about the short film that started it all and I give it a massively negative recommendation.