Mops & Ollie

An alien lives on a tiny planet, living off the trash that will occasionally fall from the intergalactic highway above. One day a new arrival on his planet offers change, but can he see the value of the new over what he has always come to see as important?

There is a very nice moral within this short animation – about the value of friendships, about seeing through the superficiality of products and goods, and about being able to make personal change to catch what really matters in live; all of this is worthy and all of it is made in a very accessible and child-friendly fashion. This is an approach that plays through the whole piece. The animation is bright, colourful, non-threatening characters, and the music adds to deliver big smiles, no real danger and a gentle tone; I am not sure what the point was of having it on a odd planet and having those bigger ideas, since for the most part it would have been just the same film had it been in a grassy field next to a regular roadway, and the characters just been variants on normal creatures.

The film probably will play very well with a younger audience who can easily access the color and the easy tone of the film, however for those older children (or adults) there is really nothing else here to grab onto. That's a shame for other viewers, and does limit the film as a whole – but to be fair if it works for its target audience then it is hard to complain too much.