The Shoe Fairy

Impressions before seeing it
Here's a new one: I saw the first few minutes of this on TV a while back and I thought it looked interesting, but I never got to see the rest of it. And then I never heard about it again, because it's obscure over here and there is no Region 1 DVD. Then I finally found a region free version. Yay!

How was it?
To be honest, when I popped in the DVD and saw those first few minutes again, I couldn't remember why I had found it interesting. Not that the opening was boring, but back then I remember thinking this was going to be one of those cool, charming foreign movies, and this time it didn't feel like the beginning stood out at all.

Anyway, in The Shoe Fairy, our main character Dodo is addicted to buying shoes. This is about to sound sexist, but as a male I couldn't care less about shoes. However, I do love to buy DVDs and Blu-rays so I was able to identify with the concept of obsessive collecting. Nice save, Shoe Fairy. Then it kind of turns into a love story when Dodo hooks up with her dentist (at whom I giggled immaturely when it was revealed that his name was Smiley Wang). The movie tried to make their relationship endearing by creating cute little moments between them but it didn't have the same kind of charm as, say, the relationship in Life is Beautiful. For example, when Dodo sleeps in the morning, Smiley Wang (hehehe) blocks out the sun for her by sitting in front of the window and placing numerous hats on his head (their curtains shrunk in the laundry), which is kind of cute but the same effect could be achieved if he would simply stand up, or put something else in front of the windows. And finally, this movie just has way more background muzak (that's what it is, it sounds like the generic background muzak of an instructional video) than is necessary for a movie. It's like the opposite of No Country for Old Men, there is music in almost every scene.

Recommendation
A little lengthy for its simple - and slightly weird - story, but it does have a bit of charm to it. Maybe check it out if you ever find it on TV, but I can't really say it's worth hunting down the region free DVD. Thought it would stand out more, but it's kind of average.