One Eyed Jacques

Interesting to note that the previous commentator was confused why any of the characters needed to be French . Here's me screaming " Duh it's because it's a French short film Bob " until I checked after seeing it and was amazed to find out that it's a British made short film which leads me to ask why it was filmed in French . Maybe it has a " French " sense of humour ?

Regardless of its country of origin I wasn't too taken with it . Like a great number of short films with a running time of shorter than three minutes it's more of a sketch than anything else and certainly one that won't have too many people falling about in the aisles , I guess that's why I thought it was a French production - I didn't quite get the humour , and I suppose the idea behind it was so director Richard Clark could dazzle the audience with some clever cinematography

A man and a woman sit having dinner. We witness this from the man's POV. However the man is a messy eater of the pasta and gets some on his eye. When he starts to clean it, it falls out and rolls along the floor sparking a chase around the restaurant, much to the woman's embarrassment.

Made with Hide and Fuel for FilmFour this short continues their trend of being disposable and slightly amusing. The idea here is that we see through a glass eye which then takes a roll. `What's the point?' I hear you ask - well me too. The point seems to be to have a film that shows off the ability of the camera crew, and in fairness it does that very well. The shots are clever and well filmed.

However it's all too light and not funny enough to sustain even a 3 minute running time. It's a little gross but the joke is done early on and there is no build to a punchline that was needed for a good finish. The cast don't do well - they only play strange French caricatures rather than characters, and I don't understand why they needed to be French anyway!

Overall if you can watch all three shorts at once then they probably make for an amusing 10 minutes. One for one they are disposable at best and just about worth watching once. When I saw them they all reminded me of a quick fire sketch show like The Fast Show or something. However these `sketches' are not funny enough or clever enough generally to make it onto a show like that.