SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2022 REVIEW! The wheel in the sky keeps on turning in writer-director Kenzie Sutton’s amazing claymation short Someone Take The Wheel. Starting with dealing with the mess of a puppet dog taking a truly epic wee, the filmmaker presents several characters repetitiously going through mundane daily tasks. One person is mowing a lawn that will never finish being mowed. Another has to go to a menial job that has to be seen to be believed.
Someone else struggles to get out of bed in a room full of empty pizza boxes. And all the laundry needs to be done. Also, the guy jogging down the street is always jogging and jogging. The routines are revisited again and again. And soon, we see the big wheel of the world turning and turning in space.
“…several characters repetitiously going through mundane daily tasks.”
Claymation and stop motion puppetry are some of my favorite animation formats. There is a unique quality to the look and movement that no other form has. This is one of the reasons millions watch the crap out of the deer with the red honker every year. The amount of work that goes into even just five minutes is colossal. The wheel set used in Someone Take The Wheel is enormous. And Sutton did all the animation herself. Wow!
Claymation and stop motion animation are cinematic mediums where sculpture becomes Pinocchioed into shimmering lifeforms. Sutton’s craftsmanship is as impeccable as her comic timing. The menial job sequences one poor woman has to go through are as hilarious as it’s true. And just as the repetition of ritual gets just a tad, well, repetitive, the director gives us the big reveal. The finale has a spectacular cosmic image that serves as a magnificent pay-off. Sutton may have had to do several little things over and over, but the result, Someone Take The Wheel, is as big as the sky.
"…Sutton's craftsmanship is as impeccable as her comic timing."
