Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty

Reading the nominations for the Best Animated Shorts this year, I decided to watch this nominee. On discovering it was Irish (I am of Irish ancestry and take pride in it), I was further enticed. The overall result is mixed yet generally positive.

"Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty" features an unfortunate grandchild forced to listen to a warped rendition of the classic fairy-tale by his deranged grandmother. Ultimately, there is not much structure to the piece, but it is quite funny for what it is.

The two parts are contrasted in terms of their medium; the clips of the fairy-tale are told in bold Flash-style animation, whereas the frame is showcased in Pixar-style computer animation. The 2D animation is more successful than the 3D animation; the former is simple and works well on a modest budget, whereas the 3D animation suffers a bit and does seem a bit gummy. Needless to say, this is a nice little short, even if it seems unlikely to snatch the Oscar that it's been nominated for.

This Oscar nominated animated short is about a grandmother who tells a bedtime story to her grandchild, which is a scary version of Sleeping Beauty.

"Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty" is technically great, with cute characters, nice 3D animation of the bedroom and also visually pleasing 2D animation of the fairyland. The contrast of the dark and eerie bedroom and the delightful fairyland is interesting, as the colour schemes do not fit in the mood of the subplots. However, the plot itself is rather flat. We only see the grandmother telling a scary story which makes the grandchild frightened. There is nothing else on offer. No ups or downs, no things to learn from. I am left to wonder what the point of the short is.

Fairy Tales are full of fantasy and hope and wonder and are often told to young children to help them get off to sleep with heads full of perfection and dreams of love. Of course, when they are being told by an aged Irish grandmother, perhaps some of the detail is different n the way it is told but, hey, Sleeping Beauty is Sleeping Beauty right? I watched this film (finally) because it somehow managed to get itself nominated for an Oscar – a fact which, no offence, suggests that it was a rather slow year in the ol' "animated shorts" category because, while amusing, it is certainly no more than that. The idea is sound though and I thought it would be much smarter than it was but it does still have enough about it in terms of potential to be "pretty good" even when it falls short of what it could have been. The fairy-tale section is rather crudely OTT and obvious and it does detract from the "real world" animated stuff that does have a touch of comedy about it. It is in these section where the bitterness of the grandmother comes through best, because it is a bit more subtle than the overblown version of the story she is telling – it also helps that the animation is more appealing too.

As it is though it is never as sharp nor as funny nor as clever as one would have hoped (or the Oscar nomination suggests). It is amusing and technically well done but nothing more than that – solid little short film but the potential was there for more than that.

Putting aside the terror on the face of the little child (who must live a life of fear and panic), Granny is quite right in her judgment of the nastiness youth often has for the aged. Do I sound prejudiced. I thought the story she told was a little like the comedian (I can't recall his name) who starts out making a statement and then gets angrier and angrier once he realizes what he is saying. John Belushi used to do some of this, as well. Anyway, the kind little story of Sleeping Beauty and her christening turns into a loud rant. Grannie goes off on the slender young fairies who attend and the results are hilarious.

Very briefly...it's a gorgeous work of CGI and 2D animation, but the story is so blisteringly boring that it doesn't work. The grandmother just yells at the kid listening to the story, and that is supposed to be funny. Things like, "do you think the fairy did this?" to a headshaked no, "YOU BETTER BELIEVE SHE DID THIS!!!" It's a lot of yelling in the place of comedy, and there is nothing redeeming about her version of the story.

It's flat, uncharming, and unfunny. Nothing happens in this version that we don't already know, and despite the apparent fact that Grandma is trying to do nothing but scare her storytell-ee, it fails to give us any reason to listen. Easily the weakest of the nominees this year, I believe Partly Cloudy was far more deserving of the coveted nomination. This is no waste of time by any means, but it is not a deserving Oscar nominee.