User reviews

I've been running through the short films on Disney Plus in alphabetical order and I've made it to "C" and to this "Captain Sparky vs. The Flying Saucer", a short spinoff from Tim Burton's "Frankenweenie" movie. Unfortunately, I haven't seen that movie yet, nor the original version, so I'm watching this without context.

Victor (Charlie Tahan) sits down to watch one of his home movies, he selects Sparky's favourite, in which the titular hero fights off an alien invasion.

I should point out that Burton is not the director of this, it was Mark Waring, who has also worked on other stop motion films like "Isle of Dogs", "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and, perhaps most importantly for this production Burton's "Corpse Bride". It's a very short short, at just three minutes - my assumption, again based on a film that I haven't seen, is that the films production make up part of the storyline of "Frankenweenie" and maybe we saw some quick clips of this in that, but this is the whole film.

It looks great and the amount of work that goes into any form of stop motion is admirable. Exceptionally good is the "stop motion within stop motion" elements, as Victor's film employs that methodology too.

Admittedly, it doesn't add up to much. The film rather falls apart at the end, which doesn't particularly make sense, as you think Victor would reset and reshoot the ending, but it's beautiful took look at whilst it lasts.

The only positive I can think of is the outlandish cheapness of this, which probably wasn't cheap at all. It's an attack on flying sauces made of various tin cans and things by a pet dog. It's only two minutes long and that's as it should be.