Self Help

"Self Help" was a fun edit of "Fight Club" that told an abridged version of the love story between The Narrator/Tyler Durden and Marla, but if you had never seen the original "Fight Club", you would have very little context of what was going on. Overall, it was pretty well-executed and retained "Fight Club's" insane charm.

A pretty interesting short cut of Fight Club which focusses more on the romance side and Tyler's Durden's identity, although there's enough of the original plot to render the edit a little confusing if you've not seen the original (obviously do not watch this without watching the original). Still, it's a bold idea to make a cut of Fight Club which doesn't feature the actual fight club. Editing is slightly rushed - but it works.

I do think that the edit would've made more sense had Marla featured more heavily, but I understand that this was for a consecution so TCN had to stay under a certain runtime if I'm not mistaken.

Cuddly details a classic triangle. A girl, a man, and the man's alter-ego.
The jagged relationship between Marla and Tylers in "Fight Club."
This crackles from the onset with the opposites attract trope.
Then, for a chunk of time, Marla disappears.
Instead of a short, this feels more like a series of fragments.
I wish cuddly had made different choices to enhance the continuity. As this is, this is a bit messy.
Sound is not always clear, either, and dialogue suffers.
Part of this is cuddly's fault. Guys helming this particular Consecution antho bear some responsibility, as well, in not exercising enough editorial control and providing feedback.
If you honchos in charge did try to advise cuddles, my apologies.

I really wanted to love this one, since "Fight Club" is one of my all-time favorites. Unfortunately there were too many dodgy editing choices to distract me. Not to say that the editing was bad, but it definitely needed more finesse and care. And the overall narrative didn't quite work for me. The way I approach these shorts when I watch them is "Does this make sense if I've never seen the original?" and for this one there are way too many holes and unanswered questions. Cuddly did a good job at telling their overall story, but there were too many things left out to make this it's own neat package. For example, we needed to see "Jack" with Marla at the restaurant after his revelation, which leads to him putting her on a bus for her safety. Without that, we see Marla being dragged off a bus in the finale and her yelling about why he put her on a bus, and it's just very obvious there is more to the story that needed to be seen.

I enjoyed this one a lot. I think Fight Club is a great film and have seen it a number of times, and overall I think thecuddlyninja's effort at condensing the story worked. Of necessity there are some elements that have to go unexplained - the Space Monkeys just appear in the story, some of the background between Marla and the Narrator has to be read through subtext, things like that - but I think these are limitations in the source. I did feel that the transition back from the dream sequence was a tad abrupt, but I suspect it was intentional as all the other transitions (including the music replacement near the end) were smoothly handled.