Bike Ride

This short about the end of a relationship is definitely from a guy's point of view. It's as much about the journey as the destination.

It seems that most guys can't talk about their feelings and this guy is no different. Yet somehow we know what his feelings are and the animations that accompany the voice-over complement this wonderfully.(sometimes belying what he's really feeling rather than what he's saying)

I was consistently interested. The dialogue rang completely true and I was hooked just a few seconds in. The drumming that serves as background music is perfectly suited to the subject and the scene transitions. The animations are simple and yet not crude. Seldom have I seen a short of this type where the animations and the score and the voice-over worked as well together.

Bravo.

Bike Ride is a short animated film that tells the tale of a young man who rides his bike for 5 hours to see his girlfriend. It is a mellow, smart and funny story that doesn't try to be anything it isn't. Overall, a cool film.

Working with simple animation, a man recounts a time when he rode his bike fifty miles to see his girlfriend only to find himself being dumped by her. This short animation is inventive, clever and deceptively simple. Visually it looks easy because it is all white lines on a black background but to describe it this way is to do it a disservice because it is better than that. The lines flow and alter across the screen as the story is told and it works really well – complimenting and often expanding on the words.

The dialogue is quite cool. It is a nice voice and the story is interesting but it is delivered too flat. I can see what the idea was, delivering it in a real way, but it would have been more interesting if more had been betrayed by the words – like Alan Bennett's Talking Heads character where you learn so much about the characters in their own stories. However even without this it is an engaging little animation,. For all the suggested simplicity, the animation does actually flow really well and is impressive throughout.