Butler's Cinema Scene

2018 OSCAR-NOMINATED ANIMATED SHORTS  Overall rating: B

 56 minutes | No MPAA rating

Traditionally animated shorts were aimed at the funny bone.

Mickey Mouse. Bugs Bunny. Tom & Jerry.

Well, that was then.  As this year’s slate of Oscar-nominated animated shorts makes clear, today’s animators are interested in big themes and deep emotions.

Only one of the nominees is overtly comical.  The others gravitate toward the arty end of the narrative spectrum, with a special emphasis on works that attempt to encompass an entire life (or a big chunk of one). (Remember the wedding album sequence that opened Pixar’s “Up”?  It’s the spiritual grandfather of many of these nominees.)

“ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR”  (Canada, 14 minutes) B

In Alison Snowden and David Fine’s savage spoof of psychiatry, a canine shrink convenes a group therapy session of diverse animals.

Among others, there’s a pig with an eating disorder and a leech with self-esteem problems. But things go really south when a new patient invades the room: a towering gorilla with anger issues.

The dialogue and voices are basically naturalistic; that it’s all being delivered through cartoon animals makes it truly bizarre.

Classic moment: Leonard, the doggy doctor, notices the discomfort in the room when a single-mom praying mantis laments the difficulty of finding a good male of her species. Adapting exactly the sort of diffident therapy-speak that pisses off so many of us, Leonard offers: “Clearly, sexual cannibalism is for some still a taboo.”

Tres droll.

“BAO”  (USA, 8 minutes)  B

If you saw “Incredibles 2” last year you probably caught Domee Shi and Becky Neimann-Cobb’s “Bao,” which played before the feature.

A visually sophisticated (and wordless) valentine to maternal longing and generational conflict, the film centers on an Asian household — presumably Chinese — where the wife fantasizes that one of her hand-made stuffed dumplings is actually a baby.  So fertile is her imagination that she watches the little guy grow up, go to school, hit those difficult teenage years and eventually show up at the door with his new squeeze, a perky Anglo gal.

“Bao” takes a too-cute (borderline freakish) idea and turns it into emotional gold, especially with its universal theme of the young growing up and more-or-less abandoning their parents.

“LATE AFTERNOON” (Ireland, 10 minutes) B+

Eloise, an elderly lady, and her caregiver daughter, Kate, are preparing to move from Eloise’s longtime home to a care facility.

But each item plucked from the shelf and packed away is a sort of emotional trigger for the old gal, who may be addled in the present but is absolutely eloquent when reliving her past.

Louise Bagnall and Nuria Gonzalez Blanco’s film is a sort of homage to Marcel Proust (Eloise’s memories a trigged by a serving of tea and biscuit) and the visual rendering — a sort of children’s book illustration style filled with bright fields of color — finds just the right balance between the fanciful and the real.

“WEEKENDS” (USA, 16 minutes) B+

So packed with revelatory detail is Trevor Jimenez’s “Weekends” that one can only assume it is autobiographical.

This  drama centers on a young boy who lives with his divorced mom (she seems to have some emotional issues) and spends weekends in the apartment of his father,  who fills the place with samurai paraphernalia, shares action-packed videos with his son and in general behaves like an overgrown kid.

The disconnect between his father’s infantile, escapist  world and the pain of his mother’s (she finally finds a boyfriend, only to be disappointed) gives “Weekends” huge emotional heft; moreover, Jimenez employs no dialogue in telling a complex and carefully nuanced tale.

Pay close attention. You will be rewarded.

“ONE SMALL STEP” (USA, 8 minutes) B

Another entry about parents and children, this time focusing on a little girl who lives with her single-parent father (he’s a solitary shoe repairman) and dreams of becoming an astronaut (thus the use of Neil Armstrong’s famous quote in the title).

Andrew Chesworth and Bobby Pontillas’ film follows the girl as she grows (her favorite clothing is a pair of moon boots hand-crafted by Daddy), enters adolescence, faces disappointments and bereavements and eventually puts those space-age dreams behind her.

Except that they keep creeping back when least expected.

In wordlessly spanning nearly 20 years “One Small Step” gives us a real feel for a life in progress.

| Robert W. Butler