Negative Space

"Look at all that wasted space, look at all that wasted Time" One of the best Father Son Stories ever made even if it's only a 5 min Short Film, The level of creativity is stunning.

How do fathers and sons connect? Is it by playing games? By hugging? To this day, I'm not sure how my father and I ever did it, although we did.... I'd like to think so, anyway. I know after I spoke at my father's memorial service (and my brother didn't), he smiled and said "That's who he was to you." In this animated short, a father and son connect by the father, a traveling salesman, teaching his son how to do something very important to him: pack a suitcase well.

The piece is a trifle about trifles, yet anyone who has ever cared deeply about another individual will tell you that it's not the big things that matter, but the trifles that no one else notices that gets you through, the secrets out in the open. I'm not certain how much the visual choices add to this short -- animating it as a computer-derived claymation piece is odd. The choices don't really have time to affect the impact, as it is short enough to maintain its impact.

As we venture through the years, how much that we do is important? The relationship a son has with his absentee father occasionally comes back to how to pack a suitcase, how to get the most out of the space we have. I felt truly sad at the conclusion of this film. What have we done to take what little we have?

I'll be blunt. This year's collection of Oscar nominated animated films are a rather sorry lot...there, I said it. Most of the films are nice and reasonably well made but really nothing more....which makes me wonder who picks these films as well as what criteria they are using for their selections. Of all the picks, I think "Negative Space" is the most confusing as I just can't see what makes this one special.

The animation is okay. The characters are unique but also a little grotesque. The story is about a boy who connects with his father through efficient packing of suitcases. And, all this is punctuated by a joke at the very end that made many in the theater laugh...but I kept thinking "all this just for one joke??!!".

Some creative and inventive moments. The underwater bits were great. I really enjoyed how the animation brought the various luggage components to life. But the entire short was a set-up for one punchline at the end, basically. The ending was good, and got laughs out of everyone in the theater, but it wasn't enough to justify the whole 5 minutes spent before it.

The animation was creative and pleasant to watch, but the audio (in English) was grating throughout. Sounded amateur, compared to the level of quality of animation and the overall level of quality of all the other Oscar nominated shorts. The narrator sounded like he was speaking into a cheap microphone, the sound effects didn't sync up evenly with the visuals, and the volume was too loud.

This was the worst of the Oscar nominated animation shorts I watched for 2017.