Movie Mind Machine
2016 · 12m
Directed by Maureen Bharoocha
Tones: absurdist, humorous, whimsical
A device that lets you watch your favorite film again with completely fresh eyes — no memory of the twists, jokes or suspense — in an ingenious comedy premise.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A premise this stupid should collapse under its own weight, but Bharoocha somehow weaponizes the absurdity—it's a film about forgetting that refuses to let you forget how clever it's being, which is exactly the kind of self-aware contradiction that makes conventional comedy people deeply uncomfortable.
The execution sits in an awkward middle distance between Kaufman-style metafiction and sketch comedy, which means it never quite earns the formal rigor its conceit demands; the repetition structure had real potential as a compositional device, but the script doesn't trust it enough.
The single choice that makes this work is the decision to play the device's limitations as genuine tragedy wrapped in whimsy—there's a moment where the emotional cost of forgetting actually lands, and that tonal pivot from gag to pathos transforms what could've been a one-joke premise into something with actual stakes.
Reviews
Bharoocha delivers a slew punchlines that match the clever idea driving the narrative. It's a smart, fresh concept that still manages to appeal to our love with affair with what we already know.