Closer look: Popcorn (2019)

Today, we'll take a look at what I believe to be the funniest episode from the 3-season, 39-episode batch produced by the Patmat film studio between 2018 and 2020 - Popcorn. I have not yet seen two episodes that still need to be released on the series' official channel, but I suspect they won't be as funny as this one (hopefully, I will be proven wrong!). When all episodes have been uploaded, I will write a post giving some of my views on the other 12. Popcorn is actually not my favorite episode from these seasons - that honor goes to Tube Post (which I will write about in the future), but I believe this one is best suited to the general public.

This episode was, like many others (around 2/3) from the three "seasons", animated in China. Before we take a look at the episode, let's see how this unusually large batch of episodes came to be. It seems it was, in fact, the Chinese who approached the parent studio, not the other way around. Director Marek Beneš was initially skeptical, but the production offer seemed too attractive to decline. It's all explained in this interview with him from aktualne.cz, where he promises that Pat & Mat will not end up like Krtek (The Mole), whose 3D adaptation The Mole and the Panda produced in China was unfavorably reviewed in Czechia.

Beneš was approached by a couple of Chinese studios that would like to make a new series about the two klutzes. Although the author is personally more against it, the company's sales department does not oppose any cooperation with China. "In Asia, whether it is in Korea or China, they want hundred episodes for the series. We shot 90 of them so far, but they were made in 40 years, "Beneš describes. The Chinese came up with an offer to shoot 39 parts in two years with significantly lower costs, of course. "Today, one episode costs us about three Škoda cars. The Chinese would be able to do it for about half of this amount," Beneš adds.

The main attraction is speed. Today, four people take part in filming: a director, an artist, a cameraman and an animator. They work on one episode for three months, eight hours a day, while a Chinese studio could arrange several such shoots at once. "I say that it will not work, that it is a typical Czech environment, that it has to be done by the creators, and it is, for me, untransferable with such a distance. We also had reservations about how the episodes were made in Zlín, and it was the Czechs who worked on those,“ Beneš describes. However, he admits that there is contact between the studios about the cooperation. "There has already been a suggestion that we remake the episodes with slanted [Monolid] eyes," Beneš says.

In another interview with Beneš, the negotiations were said to be "at an advanced stage", but that one was published only in November 2017. So, it seems production probably started by the beginning of 2018, while the first movie, Pat & Mat in Action Again, was in cinemas in June of that year already - all 13 episodes premiered on ČT by September. Interestingly, Krtek's Chinese series consisted of 52 episodes (standard practice; one episode per week), so an extra "season". Patmat film had already produced Pat & Mat in the Countryside, which explains while one "season" less was ordered. In the end, the parent studio provided the storyboards and received animation work daily.

Are the Chinese productions a success? I would say - yes. Average viewers won't suspect that the episodes were not animated outside of Czechia, let alone as far away as China. The Chinese animators copied the animation style of the series good enough for it to go unnoticed. The animation seems to have gone a bit downhill for Chinese episodes with a 2020 copyright date (presumably those were rushed), but that's a topic for my other post.

I haven't been able to find any information about the studio from China, but the people who worked on the episodes are listed in the credits - five animators and three set designers and workers. Our only look into their production is a short video that appears at the end of Pat & Mat in Action Again. Here are a few screenshots (look at the bottom screens - scenes include those from Rodeo and Schody - also a return for female animators to the series after 1990). Update, July 2020: Info on the Chinese studio, Steamworks Studio, has come up - click here for details.

Let's get back to the episode now. It is officially available on the series' channel, but that video is country-blocked for most of Europe and some other countries, such as Japan. Therefore, here's a link for an unofficial video as well.

When I saw this episode for the first time, I immediately liked it. It made me laugh more than many other new episodes. Reactions from other fans and friends convinced me it was not just my opinion. I showed this episode to a friend who is 44 years old and his only previous exposure to the series were ... a je to! episodes he watched as a kid. He laughed his head off watching it and even had to watch a repeat of it the next day.

From the general idea, tone and some details from this episode, I suspected it was written by a younger screenwriter, probably Štěpán Gajdoš (I originally watched it without credits) and I was proven right when the credits indeed listed his name for story and script. I usually find his entries to be a bit weak (with a couple of real duds), so I'm glad he did this one, his best work by far. This episode also got included in the Pat a Mat: Kutilské trampoty movie, which premiered in the Netherlands on November 21, followed by a Czech release on Decemeber 5, 2019.

The beginning is the only part of the episode I don't like. Pat and Mat go through various TV channels at a rapid pace. It feels like filler material as you don't see anything apart from the fact that the two have a very small attention span. I would have cut most of the first minute and started with the popcorn bowl being emptied out, exchanging the acting that feels a bit forced for more acting in the actual plot.

Still, an interesting snippet is when the two encounter themselves on the TV, their episode Car Wash, that is. I love how they immediately skip over that ("we don't wanna see that again!"). The musician Zdeněk Zdeněk (or Zdeněk², as I like to call him) even plays a short section of the classic theme. This is the first time that a clip from another episode appears in an episode.

At least two animators worked on this episode, which you can see by the different puppets that were used that differ slightly. One of the Pats has a different cap and eyes, while there's also a pair of puppets that have overly large grins. One of the Mats looks a bit awkward, with his cap looking somehwat squashed.

Continuity is not a virtue of these episodes. In the scenes in the kitchen, the popcorn packages are present in the cupboard in the wider shots, while not in the close-ups. This is not a big mistake, but there are some more noticeable ones in other episodes.

If you have trouble recognizing Chinese episodes, there's a quite easy way of noticing them. This set appears only in Chinese episodes. The Czech sets tend to be more detailed, while the Chinese have more props in English - for instance, the Wacky Cake and My Kitchen, My Rules papers on the fridge.

The scenes with the popcorn exploding from the pot are very funny and nicely timed. The popcorn have a strange, almost flat look and at first I thought they were added digitally. Although that doesn't seem to be the case, some fly out not from the pot, but in front of the characters and some, like the one that hits Mat's cap, were filmed from a weird angle and look enormous.

The nylon threads (strings) that are used to hold props in air are often digitally removed in the newest episodes, which I understand, but don't like, as they give me a better sense of how certain scenes were filmed. The one the postproduction crew missed (or didn't care to remove) are glass shards falling after the popcorn shatter them. I also noticed the Chinese episodes tend to use strings (or is it some metal material? I don't know) which keep the two's feet in air much more often than their Czech counterparts. These are also sometimes missed.

My favorite individual gag is a very unusual one for the series. On their way, the popped corn also hits a statuette on top of a wardrobe and removes its hands - a clear reference to the armless Venus de Milo statue. Meta-art is rare in Pat & Mat and this is its second appearance in this episode. Also of note is that this gag will fly over heads of the series' main target audience, children aged 3-8 - and I like that. Something for us adults (or, should I say, older children)!

Although the drill looks like the ubiquitous drill used since 1976, it's not. It's a neat replica. The original drill is more worn out and lighter (as seen in Tube Post). You can also see the difference in lighting in the Chinese and Czech episodes - the lighting for the Czech episodes was changed for the third series - and made better, in my opinion.

This episode also has some nice cinematography. I liked seeing the popcorn from the tube and the pot inside the fireplace.

What makes the scenes of the popcorn flying out of the chimney so funny? Pure comedic exaggeration and repetition of the same action of inserting more popcorn inside. Those are devices that are sometimes forgotten and work great here.

In that regard, the conclusion feels a bit anti-climactic and, as a consequence, less funny. The new episodes are mostly written with endings that bring a certain resolution to the proceedings and tone down the chaos. Why not try something different - like going even a step further until the popcorn literally starts to barge into the house via the windows and they can now eat it without moving outside? This way the popcorn would have made an interesting house-terrace-house circle and I feel it would have been funnier. However, this ending is still memorable enough and there's a great piece of acting where Pat doesn't understand what Mat has in mind and shakes his cap in confusion, while Mat smugly tiptoes to the background until Pat finally gets it.

What was your opinion about this episode? Did you also find it enjoyable and was it that much funnier than the rest of the 2018-20 episodes? As always, I would love to hear your opinion. Until next time (hopefully, not that far away), ... a je to!