Onemanshow: The Movie Review

First of all, it is necessary to clarify terms. There is no point in looking for an answer to the question of whether Kazma made a good film, because a similar attempt is doomed to failure. The question wouldn’t even make sense. Nevertheless, let’s try to at least reveal what makes this audiovisual equivalent of a circus or lottery problematic.

The well-known prankster and provocateur, thirty-eight-year-old Kamil Bartošek, known as Kazma Kazmitch, has so far intervened in social and media events through the One Man Show and social networks, although his pieces usually took people from the real world as hostages. They were always more complicated than thought out, always aimed at emotions in the maximum possible way and sometimes better, sometimes worse gave the impression that it was a contribution to some social debate. That in the background there is a critical view of certain institutions or phenomena – most successfully probably in his “breaking in” to the TV show Prostrěno, where he directed a fictitious mentally ill contestant.

Kazma decided to give his latest act the shape of a feature film. This in itself is surprising, because it is his worst and most empty hocus pocus, the hostages of which this time are not famous celebrities or TV shows, but ordinary people, including all paying viewers. And Kazma repeatedly mocks them in the film for sitting on his back.

It’s hard to imagine a worse way to get rich. When you go to the circus, you expect elephants, acrobats and a clown, not a guy with zero charisma and dark glasses who openly laughs at how he robbed you of your money.

The main difference compared to Kazma’s previous works is not a large screen and a larger footage. The difference lies precisely in the fact that he collects an entrance fee for this latest circus act. And also in the fact that the only “topic” is money.

What’s wrong about it? Isn’t this the basic interaction between the audience and the artists? And isn’t it normal that some performances don’t go well? The basic problem lies in the fact that Kazma did not have what many creators do, that he wanted to entertain and failed. He admits all the time that he just wanted to draw crowds into the cinema as actors of his show with the parameters of a not-so-successful circus performance. And in record numbers.

Onemanshow: The Movie is ostensibly a genre film for a certain part. Kazma plays the main role, kind of himself, after all, he often claims that it is not a film, but reality. What if the caption later labels all the characters and events as fictitious. This is just one example of how the filmmakers try to alibi to avoid saying anything with the film. It’s just empty nose watering.

The hero, Kazma, plans to earn a bundle of money by fraud. Which has various reasons including infidelity, blackmail and revenge. He has a funny mustachioed henchman on hand, who resembles figures from the works of the director Guy Ritchie, a guy who looks and is supposed to look like Ivo Rittig talks to him. And over time, they recruit a whole bunch of weirdos, as it happens in heist films, on the skeleton of which the project partly rests. But above all, Kazma invited a director known as Andy Feha, who knows how to walk in genre waters, to help him give the work a fresh stamp.

When it comes to various diversionary actions such as “rent a plot of land under the guise of shooting a war film and bury a container with a car in the trunk of which is a bundle of money unobserved”, he can entertain for a moment with punchy, usually obscene jokes, pace, brisk editing, in short, he successfully copies functional genre patterns. However, it lacks the main thing: any interesting or believable characters.

Kazma’s image – whether by design or simply due to a lack of character – is that he is an annoying, self-centered person. And he still presents himself as a pseudo-fictional hero of the film. This is the main reason why many call the film uninteresting and boring, because few people can be interested in what happens in the life of such a person, in what way he crosses the boundaries of the law or ethics.

Kazma admits in the film that he just wanted to draw crowds to the cinema as actors of his show. | Photo: Etiquette film

However, the fact that it is a dysfunctional “genre” still represents the least significant problem of a work that does not belong on cinema screens.

Films about gangsters and villains should not have Mirko Dušín in the center, they need someone believable, at least a little likeable despite the dubious character. However, the movie Kazma doesn’t seem like a badass and a thief from the works that were supposed to be his role model, but just another version of YouTubers, such as Marcus Revolta, who try to sell pseudo-motivational speeches to children that look like the worst caricature of the American dream.

These influencers are usually either pretending or maybe even believing that they are doing the right thing, that they are helping people to be better, perform better, achieve their dreams. Kazma also makes similar speeches to the audience during the film, but perhaps even a failed schoolboy could not take them honestly.

The protagonist tells the audience to follow him, not to be afraid to dream big. So, dear children: if anyone tells you that it’s cool to rob a bookie to pay off a guy who’s blackmailing you because you got drunk and caroused and then cheated on the girl of your life, they’re bullshitting. It’s not cool at all. It’s just Kazma openly mocking you for paying for a ticket and watching his immature variation on a heist movie, serving only as a cover for one immature circus performer to stroke his ego as he ran away with everyone.

On the picture from Onemanshow: The Movie is Kamil Bartošek aka Kazma. | Photo: Etiquette film

Kazm’s film is obviously – like all his works – part of a wider whole. The search for a car with a bundle of money in the trunk was a prank, or a pre-planned prank, which he provoked even before covid. In the film, he continues to do so and confuses the audience, what is reality and what is not, whether and how they can come to millions thanks to the purchase of a ticket.

It is almost certain that the film will have some kind of ending, so that Kazma once again shows how he outsmarted everyone. But it doesn’t really matter what it will be.

The movie Kazma cheated the bookmaker, the real Kazma cheated the viewers, who through the tickets will bring him quite possibly a larger amount than what is involved in the movie “story” – the distribution company Bontonfilm claims that 290 thousand viewers saw Kazma’s film in cinemas during the first weekend.

It is actually irrelevant whether Kazma is a little naive or just cunning and unscrupulous. The trick worked for him. Any text like this is just grist to his perfectly alibi mill.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to be critical of such circuses, in which the only value is money. However one obtains them. To the circus, which even goes so far as to abuse the current situation in Ukraine and wants to redeem himself from his actions by having the “hero” Kazma bring stuffed animals to the children there.

When he committed his pseudo-humanistic or moralistic tricks on Leoš Mareš or the organizers of the Czech Lion, he chose equal targets. But if this time he has ordinary people as his adversary and is trying to sway emotions to his side by exporting stuffed animals to Ukrainian children? Here, instead of words, a single laconic “flashing” smiley would do.

However, if you have the skin of a hippopotamus and can take the whole thing as a cynical game, the target of which is yourself, then for you Kazm’s film can be a hundred-minute version of the scratch card. However, instead of a single scratch with your thumb nail, you will have to actively and according to the creators suffer repeatedly to uncover all the clues needed to win millions.