Everyone knows about Sock Heaven. That’s that place where socks go when they die as you’re doing your laundry, leaving behind a single stocking…and an invariably befuddled and irritated human being.
Maybe Sock Heaven is located next door to the land of the Lint People. Director Helder King Sun creates this colorful and imaginative world deep inside the bowels of your laundry dryer in his charming short “Lint People.” Inhabited by cute little critters made of, yes, real laundry lint, this is an animated world in constant motion; its dusty inhabitants constantly atwitter and chirping away in a high-pitched, unintelligible language all their own.
One doesn’t need a translator to understand their terror when an ogre-like Big Lint Creature leaps out from hiding and begins feasting on its precious tiny brethren the way humans munch popcorn.
Of all the animated films out there, I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film starring stop-motion animated lint creatures before. The story is simplistic and repetitive, but that doesn’t seem to matter so much here. “Lint People” is one of those films where its charm and novelty value alone carry it along, if only because it’s a short and not a feature.
Maybe for the sequel, Sun will send the denizens of Lint World on an excursion into Sock Heaven. Then, he could sell all the socks they recover and finance the “Lint People” feature, coming soon, to a dryer near you.
