Genre

Although I shudder to think what this says about me, I love this short! In my own defense, let me also state that I loved The Man Who Planted Trees (what that apparent dichotomy says, who knows? Who cares?) and I'm a prince of a fellow currently in frog mode. But I digress.

A poor rabbit finds himself trapped in a situation that would reduce Franz Kafka to one gigantic twitch and takes the viewer down a rabbit hole that would send Lewis Carroll out of the room, screaming incoherently as he ran. Why this didn't get nominated for an Oscar (even a student nomination) I'll never understand. A must for any fan of films, particularly the demented ones (the films, I mean, not the fans) and well worth tracking down. I found it on a Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation and I believe it's to be released (tentatively, anyway) sometime next year by the animator as part of a compilation of all his animated shorts. Most highly recommended!

'Genre'is another fine animated comedy short from the brilliant and twisted mind of animator Don Hertzfeldt. Here he draws a rabbit on a piece of paper and puts the poor thing through all kind of movie genres. The rabbit plays a part in a romantic film, the science fiction film, the porno film. Then the animator slowly loses his ideas and he starts combining genres and create new ones, so suddenly the rabbit stars in a disaster porno film, just to name one.

After 'Ah, L'Amour', already a fine comedy, Hertzfeldt improves his animation and his comedy with 'Genre'. The short is inventive, perfectly animated, twisted and therefore probably not that great for everybody, and brilliant in how it uses such a simple idea in the most effective way possible. For the follow ups including 'Billy's Ballon' and 'Rejected' can be said the same. You should not miss any of them.

This is the funniest short animation I've seen since "Bambi Meets Godzilla." The depictions of familiar genres ("romantic comedy," "the buddy film") are funny, but the combinations that follow are outstanding.

Tummy-aching funny! The rabbit gets all of my sympathies, getting his ears ripped off, being fed Ebola carrots, abducted by little green aliens, etc... Don Hertzfeld's cartoons are so anarchistically (if there is such a word) funny that they can only be compared to someone like Tex Avery or Bill Plympton. There's a rabbit that has to go through a series of film genres, from romantic film to porno film etc.. and when the drawer runs out of imagination, he makes up his own genres, like sci-fi musical or porno disaster film... which the rabbit has to endure.

If you watch this one, you must also see his "Ah, L'Amour" (absolutely hilarious, a guy innocently asks women for a date or not even that, just how are they doing, and gets flayed, chainsawed, stabbed in the eyeballs,etc), "Lily and Jim", and "Rejected".

"Lily and Jim" is about a blind date gone horribly wrong... "Rejected" is supposed to contain some commercials that were commissioned by some companies from Don Hertzfeldt but rejected at sight..:D Which is not true, it's a fictional film, but very funny as such:D. "I live in a bucket!"

What a marvelous film. The artist draws an animated bunny and then subjects him to one tortuous moment after another. In doing so, he runs through just about every movie genre that exists, and some that don't. It is in an incredibly simple style that works so well. My favorite was when the rabbit finally eats a carrot and then makes an amazing discovery.