'Animation Show' not for the furry critter lover

Rob Thomas  —  8/12/2008 10:05 am

When critics make up their lists of the most influential movies of the last 50 years, the same films come up again and again: "The Godfather." "Pulp Fiction." "Star Wars."

Where's the love for "Bambi vs. Godzilla"?

The two-minute 1969 animated short, in which the beloved Disney fawn spends the first 119 seconds happily nibbling on grass, and the final second being squashed by a giant green foot, set the tone for generations of underground animated shorts to follow. If you want to get noticed in the world of YouTube and "Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation" shows, the formula is simple:

take adorable characters and torment them mercilessly.

The formula holds true for the entertaining fourth round of "The Animation Show," a collection of animated shorts from all over the world. Bunnies nearly drive off cliffs, chickens get their heads cut off by murderous chefs, and sweet old ladies are wrongly accused of murder.

Aside from a few misfires, "The Animation Show" is full of visually inventive and broadly hilarious gems. One of the funniest is Smith & Foulkes' "This Way Up," in which a pair of solemn undertakers go to extraordinary lengths (even the gates of Hell and back) to put their customer in the ground. With its gorgeously bleak computer-generated animation and dry humor, it's a corker from start to finish.

Less handsomely animated, but also very funny, is the lo-fi "Angry Unpaid Hooker," Steve Dildarian's wry tale of a 20-something who has to explain to his girlfriend why the title character is sitting on their sofa.

Other shorts prove that animation isn't just a vehicle for comedy. Julien Grey's "Forgetfulness" brings a Billy Collins poem to life, as people and images are wiped from the screen along with Collins' wry musings on memory's shortcomings. And "Jeu" is an eye-popping marvel, as a vortex of images deconstruct and reform into others in perfect time to a Sergei Prokofiev piece on the soundtrack.

Whether propelled by cutting-edge computer-generated animation or crude hand drawings, "The Animation Show" proves that animation is not a subgenre unto itself. It's a tool, one that creative minds can put to many different and innovative uses. Just watch your back if you're a furry critter starring in one.

Rob Thomas  —  8/12/2008 10:05 am