Jimmy the C

What's to say? A claymation Jimmy Carter sings the Ray Charles song--well Ray Charles sings it. Some of it is fine--some a little obvious. Jimmy's peanut heritage comes to the fore when a backup group of them sings. It wasn't too bad.

This film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short. I guess it was a rather slow year, as the film seemed amazingly ordinary to have received such a high honor. Or perhaps it was just a product of the times given the subject matter. The entire four minute film features the music of Ray Charles singing "Georgia on my Mind" and features an adequately animated Jimmy Carter, among other things. The entire film is made using claymation animation and while it's pretty crude compared to later versions of this technology, some of this is probably because it was such an early example. Later, the animation became smoother and the models themselves more finely detailed and realistic. Watchable, but that's about it.

The concept is simple. A cartoon Jimmy Carter is the visual of Ray Charles' voice singing "Georgia." It's all there in excruciating detail--the syrupy smile, the tears of sentimentality. It is laugh out loud funny and you just wish it were longer. The song by itself is wonderful just as straight audio. But the fun with using Jimmy Carter as a foil doesn't take anything from that. It's the gut punch of juxtaposition that makes it work so well. It has been years since I first saw the little gem, yet it remains as vivid as if it were yesterday. I would love to own it, just so that I could play it again like a favorite song.