The Simpsons
The Longest Daycare: A cute short involving Maggie Simpson’s harrowing experience at the Ayn Rand School for Tots, “The Longest Daycare” is a tongue-in-cheek, darkly funny episode of sorts from David Silverman, a long-time producer-director of “The Simpsons.” Portraying Maggie’s quest to save a butterfly from the wrath of various dangers at daycare, the film mocks melodrama with a fast-paced wit. While not terribly exciting, the animation is sharp and the timing is spot-on, and fans of the show will simply enjoy watching an extra 5-minute episode.
Adam and Dog
An interesting take on the story of Eden, “Adam and Dog” retells the story of Adam and Eve through the eyes of man’s best friend. A dog finds Adam in the Garden one day, and the two become fast friends. When Eve appears, Adam becomes distracted, and suddenly Dog finds himself without anyone to play fetch with. Dog goes back to wandering around the Garden, but one night, during a storm, he sees Adam and Eve—now clothed—fleeing through the forest. When Dog realizes that his best friend is leaving for good, he follows his natural instinct and goes after Adam.
What begins as a modest, even boring, short ends as a depiction of loyalty among friends. There’s something almost poetic about Dog following Man out of the Garden of Eden, and director Minkyu Lee captures that magnificent image perfectly. And even if the animation is inconsistently smooth and choppy, the illustrations themselves are beautiful. The film is light on substance, though it’s the longest of the nominated shorts.
Fresh Guacamole: PES’s “Fresh Guacamole”—at a mere two minutes, the shortest of the shorts—packs quite a creative punch. All we see are someone’s hands making guacamole, but in this recipe, every ingredient is a reimagined game piece. The onion is a baseball, which, when sliced, turns into a pair of dice; the chips are poker chips; the avocado pit is a pool ball; and so on and so forth. While completely devoid of a story, the short is a great display of whimsical stop-motion animation, and it has perfect sound effects to accompany the “action.”
Paperman
If you’ve seen any of these shorts, it’s probably been this one, since it screened in theaters before “Wreck-It Ralph.” In “Paperman,” guy meets girl, and then guy tries to get girl’s attention by throwing paper airplanes from his office window into hers, failing each time. Just when he’s about to accept failure, the airplanes take on a life of their own and guide the two together, leading them both to the spot where they first met.
A traditional, cute short, “Paperman” is definitely a crowd-pleaser. With clean animation, a good dose of humor, and direction from Pixar animator John Kahrs, the short is designed well from start to finish. My only qualm with it is the suddenness with which the airplanes come to life, since there’s no indication until then that this film hinges around supernaturally sentient pieces of paper, but this is a minor flaw in an otherwise technically and conceptually solid short.
Head Over Heels
My favorite of the shorts, one that packs more emotion and subtlety into 11 minutes than most movies do in two hours, “Head Over Heels” has a simple yet brilliant premise: an old couple, Walter and Madge, live in the same house, but have different gravities. Walter walks on the floor, Madge on the ceiling. They have grown accustomed to each other over the years, but they both know the passion has left their marriage. When Walter clumsily tries to remedy this, the house flips over and suddenly he is on the ceiling and Madge is on the floor, and they are no closer. Madge later realizes how hard Walter has been trying, and in a powerful final scene, uses her shoe collection to construct a system that will literally let her see eye-to-eye with Walter.
The writing of “Head Over Heels” is its strong point; the subtlety and cleverness with which writer-director Timothy Reckart shows the boring life and now-boring marriage of Walter and Madge—for instance, wedding pictures show that once upon a time, they both walked on the ground—make the premise pitifully sad and the ending beautifully triumphant. A stop-motion piece made with puppets, “Head Over Heels” isn’t as clean-looking as the other shorts, but it has by far the best story and concept, and on Oscar night, it’s the one I’ll be rooting for.
Danny Eisenberg is a 2010 graduate of the Bromfield School and is currently a student at the University of Pennsylvania.
