Creature Comforts

'Creature Comforts (1989)' is absolutely brilliant. Taking the audio from real interviews with the public and transposing it onto talking animals is nothing short of genius. It recontextualizes the characters' answers and gives them a new meaning that fits with the flick's subtle anti-zoo messaging. More importantly, it makes both elements - the audio and the animation - much funnier. The juxtaposition between the very normal, unrehearsed dialogue and the wonderfully fluid, somewhat silly stop-motion animation is brilliant. It has such a distinct effect. The short truly is remarkable; it's no wonder that the concept was explored in a television series (also brilliant) soon after. If you ever needed even more poof that the people at Aardman (and Nick Park, in particular) are some of the most important creators of animated content in the last thirty-five years (on top of Wallace and Gromit, Shaun The Sheep and Chicken Run, that is), then look no further than this, one of their earliest efforts. The talent was clearly there right from the start. This is a seminal stop-motion short and I highly recommend it. 8/10.

This short won the Oscar for Animated Short, beating another Aardman Studios short, A Grand Day Out. The concept behind its creation is an old one, used by John and Faith Hubley: record conversation and come up with fitting animation. In this case, someone went around interviewing residents of a housing development and the answers were transformed into the answers given to an interviewer by animals in a zoo. Everything here is excellent: animation, dialogue are wonderful. Most definitely worth getting. In print on more than one source: a compilation titled Creature Comforts and on The World's Greatest Animation. Highly recommended.

If there's any single short out there that marked a real defining point for those claymation whiz kids down at Aardman, I'd say 'Creature Comforts' is the one. The debut piece of the now legendary Nick Park (who'd go on to create a series of captivating short films featuring a certain cheese-loving inventor and his well-read canine cohort, whose names I'm sure you don't need me to spell out for you here), it's now a widely-regarded classic in stop motion animation history, and there are some pretty good reasons for that. No other Aardman project, great as they frequently are, has managed to combine such high levels of whimsy, charm and poignancy quite as deftly as this one. The bright idea of taking real-life recordings with members of the public and aligning them with talking plasticine animals in the style of vox pop interviews (in this case, zoo animals commenting on their general living conditions, as extracted from discussions with residents of retirement homes, council housing and student halls) was so fresh, so ingenious and so delightful that the five minute running time designated here simply wasn't enough. It was a concept which begged to be extended, and it spawned a much-deserved franchise in the early 90s with TV ads for the UK's Heat Electric and, more recently, a long-awaited TV series in 2003. A franchise which in turn helped to establish Aardman's now-firm reputation for colourful, offbeat cosiness, as opposed to some of the more downbeat and sombre shorts they'd been working on for much of the 80s (many of which were good enough in their own right - Peter Lord's 'Going Equipped', which debuted alongside 'Creature Comforts' in the Channel 4 series 'Lip Synch, in particular is more than worth a look).

Compared to a lot of the output that followed it, the animation here may look a little primitive by today's standards (the depressed gorilla, for example, is quite clearly riddled with the animator's finger prints), but it's an easily forgivable fault, and doesn't detract from the visual joy that this short is swimming in from start to finish. Get a load of all those wonderful sight gags - the elderly bush-baby's gigantic magnified pupils, the unidentified birds with beaks held on by elastic bands (the antics of the non-speaking characters hovering about in the background have always been something to keep an eye out for in the 'Creature Comforts' realm), the treadmill-running terrapins, the dozens of shrieking, flailing baby rodents…all of it gold. Earning Nick Park an Oscar in 1990 for his efforts, it's endearing and comical to the bone - and yet there's also a mild tinge of sadness to it that I doubt 'Creature Comforts' would have been nearly as memorable without. For all the quirky cuteness that those clay-built critters possess, the anguish of a few of the original speakers remains persistent in their voices, and shines through in their pertaining characters quite dynamically. Most of the animals, it would seem, are perfectly contented with their lives in captivity, but there are a few who feel the sting of alienation, the homesick wild cat from Brazil being the standout personality on this one - the high range of exaggerated mannerisms that Park uses to bring him to life are unforgettable.

A lovely film and a wonderful concept, what makes 'Creature Comforts' such a striking experience is, in part, how it touches upon some of the helplessness and frustrations of having to live in a world you feel out of place in. It's also a whole lot of fun too.

Grade: A

Before the "Wallace & Gromit" series and "Chicken Run", Nick Park made a splendid debut with "Creature Comforts", in which several animals in a zoo explain how unhappy they are to be in cages. If the cartoon is goofy, then they play it to good effect, and it has a good message. I've always thought that Nick Park not only has great ideas for cartoons, but that his claymation style is quite neat, with the bug eyes and rectangular mouths.

Other interesting cartoons of this style include not only the "Wallace & Gromit" series, but also "Wat's Pig" and "Ident". The last two are fascinating, if bizarre.

Animals in a zoo talk about their living conditions in this animated short directed by Nick Parks.

It's an excellent piece, a mixture of very funny and very sad. Most of the animals sound like pensioners or little children in their voices and viewpoints, except for one creature -- I think it's a jungle cat of some variety -- saying that he wants space and a tropical climate. It satisfies my criteria for being interesting, amusing, and having something to say about the way the world is actually run.

It's particularly notable as the first film released by Aardman. It also won Nick Parks an Oscar for Best Short Film.