Kings Up: A strange, dusty artifact of a movie

Is it worth your time?

Look, if you are looking for a tight, logical plot, keep walking. You’ll probably hate Kings Up. But if you have a soft spot for movies that feel like they were put together with duct tape and sheer willpower, this is actually a pretty fun way to waste ninety minutes. It’s definitely not for the 'everything must make sense' crowd.

Divonna Doxie is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Sometimes she looks like she’s in a completely different movie than Tex Avery, and honestly, that’s the best part. There’s a scene near the middle where she’s just staring at a wall for what feels like an eternity. I’m not sure if it was a technical error or an artistic choice, but it was hypnotic.

The set design is... well, it's something. It reminds me of the wonky backgrounds in The Scarecrow, where you can practically see the plywood shaking if someone closes a door too hard. It’s got that specific kind of low-budget honesty that you just don't see anymore. Everything feels like it might collapse if you breathed on it too heavily. 🍿

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Kings Up (1934) through its definitive frames.

Oddly specific observations:

• The lighting in the kitchen scene is so yellow it’s almost aggressive.
• Tex Avery has this habit of fidgeting with his tie that clearly wasn't in the script.
• There is a background extra in the café scene who is just eating a forkful of nothing.
• The sound mixing is all over the place; sometimes the dialogue is right in your ear, other times it’s like they’re whispering from the next room.

It’s funny, I kept thinking about Plus and Minus while watching this, mainly because both films seem to have a deep fear of silence. There’s always some weird, tinny music playing in the background, even when people are just sitting there staring at each other. It gets a bit grating after a while.

The ending doesn't really resolve anything. It just stops. One minute they’re in the middle of a heated argument, and then black screen. I actually checked my remote to see if I’d hit a button by accident. Nope. That’s just the movie.

Don't go into this expecting a masterpiece. Go into it expecting to see some people trying their best with a script that probably shouldn't have been filmed. It’s messy, it’s disjointed, and it’s arguably one of the most 'human' things I've seen in a while. 🎞️