Pearl

A series of scenes in a car and a pop song make up this film. I did enjoy the faces of the girls. But, for me, it never went anywhere. I agree that it needed editing to make a point clear.

Maybe if I see this in it's original format, I would get it. Like this it was strange, pointless and nothing special at all.

'PEARL': Five Stars (Out of Five)

A 6-minute Oscar nominated animated short film. This one is about a young girl, and her father, that chase their dreams by traveling across the country in a hatchback (which they also live in at times). It was directed by Patrick Osborne; who also directed 2014's Oscar winning animated short 'FEAST' (from Disney), which is also fantastic. This is my favorite Oscar nominated short film of 2017. It's so beautifully told, and the music is really emotional and powerful too. The film is kind of like a musical, or a long music video even; but it still tells a fascinating story, about love and family. It's a really powerful short, and it's shockingly touching too. I loved it.

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This short film played for me like a long television commercial for some car. The entire film was set within this one car and in it you see a man and his daughter age over two decades. It's extremely sentimental and clearly is the type thing that is meant to tug at your heart. But there is a certain familiarity about sort of theme and the animation quality was severely lacking. The filmmakers chose to use cel shading (a popular style a decade or more ago in many video games) but it's not even good cel shading. The overall effort looks like a nice student film and again I was left wondering how the short was nominated for such an important award. There's absolutely nothing to dislike about the film but nothing to inspire or transcendent about it either.

Of all the nominees this year, most are a rather sad lot. I predict "Piper" will take home the Oscar and if it doesn't, I will try to update my review.

Pearl (2016)

**** (out of 4)

Extremely touching animated short about a father and his young daughter who travel around in their hatchback making memories. This six-minute short shows off various portions of their lives inside this car.

PEARL was one of five films that were nominated for Best Animated Short and it's an extremely impressive one to say the least. The film is basically told through visuals and a song that gets played throughout all of it. I must say that the animation itself was quite great but that's to be expected from just about any animated piece these days. Where this film really took off was on the sheer pleasure of watching the dad and daughter grow older, go through various things and all of it set around this car. I found the film to be incredibly entertaining throughout its six-minute running time and it was also very touching and thoughtful.