Sam Klemke's Time Machine

In 1977, Sam Klemke, living in Denver, Co., decided to film on an annual basis, the highlights of that particular year in his personal life, as well as an update on major world occurrences. Klemke, who became a caricature artist at malls and shows, would continue to film this for the next 37 years, often in a self-deprecating and humorous style, and I can relate to some of his personal struggles. Perhaps this documentary will appeal to some viewers, but, for the most part, I found it to be quite ponderous, gross, and even cringe inducing, at times. There's a number of gross-out scenes of obese nakedness, as well as graphic bodily functions and bad teeth, which I felt were really unnecessary and served no real purpose, that I could ascertain, other than shock value. The film may be best served as an online vehicle, and indeed in 2010 when Klemke decided to post it on YouTube, running it from present day backwards, it went viral and received over a million hits. Australian filmmaker Matthew Bate, the writer and director here, chose to interchange the launch of the Voyager space probe, also in 1977, with Klemke's film, and the documentary flip-flops between the two throughout its duration. The Voyager carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc, which is intended to illustrate how we Earthlings live, in case it's intercepted by beings in the solar system. Bate arranged, at the end of the doc, for Klemke's movie to be sent to outer space via the Deep Space Program. Perhaps the aliens will like the film better than I did. To note: for those concerned about this feature, there were no subtitles on my DVD copy obtained at the library.

In 1977, Sam Klemke, living in Denver, Co., decided to film on an annual basis, the highlights of that particular year in his personal life, as well as an update on major world occurrences. Klemke, who became a caricature artist at malls and shows, would continue to film this for the next 37 years, often in a self-deprecating and humorous style, and I can relate to some of his personal struggles. Perhaps this documentary will appeal to some viewers, but, for the most part, I found it to be quite ponderous, gross, and even cringe inducing, at times. There's a number of gross-out scenes of obese nakedness, as well as graphic bodily functions and bad teeth, which I felt were really unnecessary and served no real purpose, that I could ascertain, other than shock value. The film may be best served as an online vehicle, and indeed in 2010 when Klemke decided to post it on YouTube, running it from present day backwards, it went viral and received over a million hits. Australian filmmaker Matthew Bate, the writer and director here, chose to interchange the launch of the Voyager space probe, also in 1977, with Klemke's film, and the documentary flip-flops between the two throughout its duration. The Voyager carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc, which is intended to illustrate how we Earthlings live, in case it's intercepted by beings in the solar system. Bate arranged, at the end of the doc, for Klemke's movie to be sent to outer space via the Deep Space Program. Perhaps the aliens will like the film better than I did. To note: for those concerned about this feature, there were no subtitles on my DVD copy obtained at the library.