Wat's Pig

This 11-minute film short is one of 4 different shorts on one VHS tape by Aardman Animations, the group that has given us the Wallace and Gromit animations. Of the four, this is the one I enjoyed the least.

At the beginning of the story we see a bandit in the night coming into the old castle and stealing the twin babies. The nanny comes in, the thief drops one of the twins, but goes off with the other on horseback. Guards are shooting at him with arrows, he is distracted, the other twin falls to the ground, and he leaves him there. The baby is cared for and raised by a pig.

That is all in the very beginning, the main of the story is the adult twins meeting again, one a soldier the other royalty, and the complications that ensue. While it is interesting to see the claymation, I wasn't particularly entertained by the story.

Not unlike THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER this is the story of a baby prince who is kidnapped by the thief in the night and ends up being adopted by a pig . If the plot sounds kind of silly don't worry because it's an animated claymation cartoon . If it was live action the whole thing would of course be ridiculous but you can get away with bizarre frivolity in cartoons

With all these type of animated short stories the plotting and the story takes second place to the animation and when I say Peter Lord is the director of CHICKEN RUN that's all you need to know about the affectionate , effective type of claymation animation seen here . The story is told with a slit scan technique which keeps everything tightly paced and there's little dialogue which will help it in finding an international market . It was also Oscar nominated . Deservedly so

I have recently been watching gobs of Academy Award nominated animated shorts. In 1997, QUEST won the award and it was amazing visually. However, while WAT'S PIG was made in a more old fashion style (using claymation), I much preferred this film to the final winner. Part of it was that for a claymation film, it was gorgeous--with terrific backgrounds and characters. And, even more importantly, I enjoyed the film--and this should be the reason we watch cartoons and other animated films. It was funny and well-written.

The plot itself is a lot like a fairy tale. At the beginning of the film, the King and Queen have twin boys. One is kidnapped and the lost in the ensuing chase. The boy is discovered and raised by a pig farmer--unaware of the boy's identity. Years pass and the prince is a rather poor leader. Then, by chance, his brother (a pig farmer whose best friend is a pig) enters the picture to save the day.

See this film--it's good for a laugh.

From the studio that brought us Wallace and Grommit comes this wonderful prince and the Pauper type tale. Two twin princes, one kidnapped at birth and found and raised by a pig. Both are now grown, one lives in a small cottage with his pig, the other is a stinking rich jerk. This deals with the prince finding out that this is his brother and deciding during a war that has started to switch places with his brother. Very little talking is in this film, most of it is lines limited to small words ("Me?"). This is by far my favorite Aardman short and is brilliantly animated and scored. Find this and enjoy! 11 mins. Not rated, contains mild violence.

From the same studio that brought you the Wallace and Gromit cartoons. Comes the weird and funny PRINCE AND THE PAUPER tale.This sure got my cousin's interest in it and I like it a lot too.Only I would much prefer the Wallace and Gromit cartoons and movie also CHICKEN RUN for one special reason they are a little more funny than this Aardman short.though I thought the beginning part was funny.At the beginning I thought it was funny because when the nanny came and saw the bandit take her baby's and screamed.I thought she made a very funny scream I thought.though I was surprised to see that this short film was only 11 minutes it seemed more like it was 15 minutes probably because I was board but never mind.But still this short film is pretty funny you should try it sometime