This is one of those movies that’s pretty much impossible to comment on without being very literal in terms of the the content contained therein. Why is this? Well, for one thing the film clocks in at just around two minutes. When a flick is this brief there isn’t a lot of time for major plot developments. Also, there’s no real story here and it would be stretching things to call this a documentary.
So, what the heck do you do in a two minute film? Well, this is essentially an exercise is using backwards footage. The star of “3 Things God Can’t Do” is a fish out-of-water, literally, who’s flopping around on a table as he suffocates for the camera. Sounds like fun already, right?
You might remember a similar image in a music video from the 1980s called “Epic” by a band who’s career went downhill so fast after that one hit, I can’t recall their name. This is sort of like that, but not nearly as good. In a nutshell, we’re meant to witness a fish die–combined with rewound footage–to answer the question raised by the film’s title. Confused?
Well, for what it’s worth, here’s what happens: Initially, we see the fish alive in a small jar of water. Then the jar is tipped over and the helpless amphibian flops around futilely trying to breathe. Next, through the “miracle” of running the film backward, we see the fish sucked back into the jar and back to his old self. That’s the number one alleged “thing that God can’t do.”
After that, the fish is again shown flopping around–this time with the jar shattered all around him. Guess what happens? The film is again backed-up and the jar reassembles itself and this fish ends up back in the water. That’s the number two “thing that God can’t do.”
Okay, prepare yourself for the fabulous climax. The next sequence is the fish again flopping around in the broken glass. But this time its head is chopped off with a cleaver. And, of course, this is played backwards with the result of its head reattaching, the jar going from shattered to whole and the fish being very much alive again in the drink–completing the trilogy of “things God can’t do.”
Maybe this was this guy’s day off from the tuna factory. I don’t know. I’m not sure what was supposed to be novel about this–since there’s no story, no message, and the technology at work here dates back to the dawn of the Twentieth Century.
If cutting a fish’s head off on camera and rewinding it makes this guy feel like God, I think the fish was the brainy one in this production.
