If you love film, then short films can be hard to love, especially your own. The drama gets cramps, the jokes are windy. It’s ten minutes or so of unease while all of us tend to dream in features. Being offered a watch of a dozen short films sounds exhausting compared to the powers of relaxation of even an excruciatingly bad feature film.
Kudos, then, to UK-based writer/director Sonny Wilson for addressing this quandary like a boot at a door. His eponymous Three Animated Short Films by Sonny Wilson confronts its six-minute size as an urgent priority, prepending almost four minutes of lo-fi intertitles to hack an arbitrary online submission requirement.
It is impressively gonzo to make viewers watch all the Star Wars crawls in a ten-minute film. And the increasingly untrustworthy-sounding narrative spun by the titles, about Wilson and a producer, is a solid introduction. They dignify the film by standing defiantly in front of it, rather than mumbling at the rear or knocking around in the middle.
tart, terrific shots of comedy
Once the animation starts, these are some tart, terrific shots of comedy. The films, Guy’s (sic) Doing it for Themselves, Little Treat, and Redland feature some flatmates whose apartment exists in a shifting urban landscape of black mold and poor yoyo etiquette. You know their surreal adventures work because the characters hold fast, stay fun, and promise to remain so if you see them again. The presentation is experimental, and Jesus and Mary Chain reverb-drenched, and the animation, voice work, music and effects are very well crafted, meaning pretty much every second is a thoroughgoing pleasure. The humor is extremely off-kilter and oblique, and I laughed throughout. There are shades of Captain Pugwash, John K and Pilot Red Sun. The overall vibe maybe is a sort of Mary, Mungo, and Rage. I loved it.
Animation is a medium Wilson sheepishly refers to as ‘the lowest form of film-making there is’ during the opening. But the MS-Draw aesthetics here belie this. His technique gives away that sweat at the margins, and the thumbprints on the plasticine dog, so to speak. All that human love and effort over a few scenes and jokes. It’s exactly right.
"…Mary, Mungo and Rage"
