Charade

An expert charade player's patience is tested by a bunch of idiotic guessers who aren't able to decipher his elaborate, oh-so-obvious clues but correctly answer another player's obscure hints in a second. Charade has spot-on humor that is very British and very wry, and there's plenty of it that one may miss the first time. Example: the John Gielgud gag when a puffy, red faced player enters from the right. Or the American Gigolo joke when the same guy leaves a telephone booth wearing Superman attire. And don't miss the last gag that comes right before the credits end.

This short reminded me of the Daffy Duck's Duck Amuck albeit one without any dialog from the players while Daffy on the other hand was verbally flaying his creator. This very quality of the main character remaining silent while enduring buffoons who can only be heard off-camera is what makes Charade so hilarious.

My Rating: 8 out of 10

I had a friend who would try to act out the plot of movies when playing Charades. We never got any of them. This one cracked me up because of the banter going on. The clues were obvious and the watchers were idiots.

When this animated short begins, you aren't particularly bowled over by the quality of the animation. It looks about as good as the artwork in SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK--simple and not especially memorable. However, like the best animation, this film succeeds because it is so well written and will almost certainly make you laugh. No wonder it won the Oscar for the Best Animated Short Film.

The movie is all about a game of movie charades. When the first guy takes a turn, he gives great clues yet the idiots can't guess it. The second guy gets up and hardly gives a clue at all--and his teammates immediately know it! This happens again and again and you start to feel sorry for the first guy--he all but writes the name of the films for his idiot partners yet they never even come close. Some of their answers, are so stupid they are rather funny. Now at this point, I might have scored the film a 7, but the way it ended was so funny and so fitting that it elevated the film to a 9--as it was hilarious!

This short won the Academy Award for Animated Short in 1984. While this is an excellent short, it would not have been my choice that year, as good as it is. But this is a wonderfully humorous and maddening short. One of the Charades players is particularly obtuse! The animation and dialogue are superb and it is certainly good that it is available on World's Greatest Animation (an excellent VHS/DVD compiation that I recommend highly) and is most highly recommended.

The 1984 winner of Best Animated Short Film shows a game of charades, wherein the audience can't figure out the obvious movies but figures out the vague ones immediately. I understand that John Minnis animated "Charade" over a three-month period while at Sheridan College, using Pantone markers on paper. The final scene was a surprise, and a pleasant one at that.

It just goes to show that a production doesn't need to be fancy. If it has a good story, that's sufficient. It's too bad that general audiences don't get to see most of the nominees for short films. There are some clever ones out there. I recommend this one.

In conclusion: to reference the 1963 movie starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, you can expect the unexpected when they play charade.