God: Serengeti

Humorous short about God, his manservant, Geoffery, and their rather "playful" stewardship of mankind. Director Neill Blomkamp shows his penchant for dark comedy, this time without any gore! Divinely funny...

Neill Blomkamp's Oat Studios released a handful of short films recently, billing them as creative playgrounds of sorts. This film is probably the most creative of the bunch (the others, although good, are built on very generic bases), whereas this one has a clever idea and also an interesting commentary on the nature of God. With that in mind though, it is unfortunate that it doesn't work as well as it should and ends up feeling like a missed opportunity.

God and his butler sit in the library while on the table in front of them, a scene plays out on a miniature of the Serengeti, with Neolithic man. Mostly disinterested in what these funny little men are doing while he reads, God allows himself to intervene to prevent their advancement, grant them kindness, but also unleash cruelty on his subjects. It is a nicely odd, comical, but yet serious film, and one that is interesting for the way it presents God. The one thing that is clear is that he sees humanity as amusing at best, but otherwise he is totally apathetic towards us – just in the same way as we'll go on a rampage in Grand Theft Auto etc, they are not real people to our view.

The downside of the film is that this simple point is delivered quickly and without much finesse. It makes it punchy perhaps, but I did wonder why it was so short when the other films were much longer; there was certainly scope to expand on this to make the same point but in a more gradual and impacting manner. Still interesting and polished enough to be worth your time, but it does feel like it could have been more.

...a budget version of Sim City (meets Monty Phyton).

Well nothing lasts forever right? Wall to wall great shorts from Oats Studios and here we have a bit of a stinker by comparison.

All the previous efforts were sci-fi epics and this is an attempt at comedy that fails miserably. Ontop of that Oats shorts are usually around the 20-25 minute mark and this is closer to 4.

All about God and his servant Jeffrey overlooking the people of the Serengeti and his anger at them discovering fire.

I get what they were trying to do, but it simply wasn't funny, entertaining and the ending was dark without a purpose.

To clarify I'm not a resentful Christian, there are plenty of things in life I believe in but an almighty cloudman is not among them.

In the bible I'm sure this story can be found. Somewhere in between the Power Ranger vs Care Bears battle royal and the passage about a man being struck down by God for fertilising the ground with his seed instead of his wife.

The Good:

Sharlto Copley as God

Directed and written by Neill Blomkamp

Nice idea

The Bad:

Poor writing

Far too short

Things I learnt from this movie:

The earth is flat, in fact it's just a dining room table in gods study

Heaven looks like the royal palace

Elephants are to humans what dogs are to sheep

Really nice comic short that is very entertaining for its duration and makes quite laugh, but at the same time leaves a strange feeling of discomfort in seeing the things the protagonist does to the living model.