Moonbird

John Hubley is a legend in the history of animation known for both his avant-garde experimental animated shorts and his emotional realism which came from him casting everyday civilians into his work. For over 20 years, he and his wife Faith made numerous animated shorts that embraced such unconventional methods, even winning oscars on the side. One of which, being today's short, is well known for having been based on tape recordings of their son's improvised play on searching for a creature called the "Moonbird".

From an artistic point of view, the film looks mesmerizingly gorgeous. Although set at night, the more neutralized and dark color scheme really emphasizes the mystery of searching for a strange creature. The character designs are relatively simplistic, yet there's a strong sense of dynamic poses that helps bring them to life. To create semi-transparent textures and overlaid images, they used double exposures, and this helps the presence of the Moonbird come off as appropriately unsettling. All the artistic touches help display a macabre fantasy world from childish imagination.

However, as beautiful as the film is from a presentation standpoint, the actual story and voice acting itself are both boring and kind of obnoxious. The idea of recording two children acting out their own play is cute in concept, but the children in the short just mumble repeatedly and it becomes really annoying after a while. It doesn't help that the actual "plot" is so straight forward that nothing interesting really happens in this film, making it come off as style over substance. I guess it feels authentic to children making up whatever they like, but when even the sound design is broken and muffled, it becomes hard to be entertained by anything in this.

Overall, Moonbird was made with pure sincerity and there is a lot of passion shown in the visuals, but its lackluster narrative and exasperating sound quality make it hard to really enjoy. I admire the short's artistry, but when I can't find much entertainment value in it, then the whole thing just feels like "a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it", to quote Stephen King. If anything, the film is like any other grade school play: tiresome, tedious and the equivalent of hearing cats and dogs moaning and howling overnight.