DANCES WITH FILMS NEW YORK 2026 REVIEW! Writer-director Robert M. Redfield’s Committee Animal asks questions about the grand design of the universe. What would happen if the animals on Earth were all designed by committee?
The short comedy drops us into an important meeting for the Fauna Design Department. Word has gotten out that the Dinosaur Project is going to be shut down and that they must remain focused on building the new animal kingdom. The meeting is led by Albert (Rick Reischman), who tries to keep it moving. Backing Albert are senior committee member Iris (Leslie Zemeckis), associate designer Julie Hodges (Riley Conrad), Luke Dziemidok (Lukas Dziemidok), and the Intern (Alec Reusch).
“…the Dinosaur Project is going to be shut down and that they must remain focused on building the new animal kingdom.”
The team is handed an impossible launch deadline from the unseen suits upstairs, with red tape, missing materials, and supply chain shortages turning every decision into a crisis meeting. Did I mention the Dinosaur Project’s end was moved up to this afternoon? On the agenda today are the kangaroo redesign, handling the dinosaur situation, implementing changes from the higher-ups, and finishing a new creature. The goal is simple: ship a finalized lineup of creatures on time, no matter how weird the compromises get.
If you’ve ever had an office job, then Committee Animal will feel very familiar. In fact, it may stir up some PTSD. The story lives by the “too many cooks” axiom, and it’s the front-line workers who are the only ones seeing the problems. A committee is what happens when you try to do anything creative. It’s bad enough to get a group of four or five to agree on something, but then to have that approved by the higher-ups… in this case, the man upstairs.
Committee Animal is a nice self-contained comedy sketch that exists to satirize office bureaucracy and, in an ironic spin, make something beautiful out of a chaotic committee.
Committee Animal screened at the 2026 Dances with Films New York.
