The Street

This uses an engagingly smudgy, visually accentuated, style of animation as we pass the time with a Jewish family patiently waiting for the death of grandmother. Patiently? Well not quite everyone. The grandson has been promised her room in their second floor flat since he was seven, so he might sooner she just got on with it. A view not entirely disputed by his mother. A bit of chat with his friends informs us all of a few post mortem facts courtesy of Lenny Kravitz and "Perry Mason" before they shut up for fear of her coming back to haunt them! Mother gets a gall stones and gran is moved to hospital Mother recovers and back comes gran. Will she go on forever? Will the lad ever get his room? Did you know that the last thing someone does when they are hanged is have an orgasm? Watch and see...

The only thing I knew about this short before watching was the plot description I read here on the site. "A young boy impatiently waits for his grandmother to die so he can have her room" was the gist of it.

So I was thinking this would go one of two ways, it would either be darkly humorous, or touching and human, maybe a combination of both. To my surprise and dismay, it turned out to be neither.

The simple and pedestrian story is told in a very mundane and uninvolving way. I felt little to no emotion watching it unfold.

But, my lord, that animation! It reminds me of those bumpers they used to show on PBS kids (is it harder to toot? or to tutor two tutors to toot?). So visually the film is a treat, but with the slog of a story, I can only give it a modest recommendation.

This short, nominated for an Academy Award, (I'm surprised it lost, though I've never seen the winner, as far as I know) is a funny, sad, sweet look at life through the eyes of a child growing up in Canada. An excellent adaptation (by the author) of a story by Mordecai Richter and yet another feather in the NFBC's cap. Caroline Leaf is a marvelous director and this is one of her best. Most recommended.

Thanks to a well-told story, believable characters, and a highly unusual look, I can certainly recommend this solid Canadian short. If you're looking for Disney-like animation, you will be sorely disappointed, but the crude paintings fit the film well, and the story moved along at a fast enough pace to keep me interested. This isn't one of the National Film Board's best features, but it was still enjoyable, and it is worth a look if you ever come across it.

This short film financed by The Canadian Film Board was about, I assume, the writer's childhood and his recollection about his grandmother and her eventual death. While I'm sure many will find this film profound, I was left feeling a bit disappointed. Instead of meaning, the movie left me with the opposite, as instead of celebrating the life of the grandmother, she seemed to be more of a burden than anything else to everyone in the family but her devoted daughter. Perhaps others ascribed more meaning to it than this, but this left me very sad. In this sense, the film was good but certainly far from a "feel good film"! As far as the technical merits go, I liked the style of the narration but found the animation itself not all that interesting. A decent film but that's really about all.