One Rat Short (2006) User Reviews

Mix of the alien and the recognizable

[Polaris_DiB · 8/10 · 20 April 2007]

This animation is very beautiful, but very weird. It's a strange mix of the animal and the anthropomorphic, and the recognizable and the alien. A hungry rat follows a bag of cheetos into a ventilation shaft, which gives away to an animal testing facility where he meets a white female rat, and the two fall in love. They manage to have some brief moments together before a failed escape keeps them permanently apart, in a touching moment of loss.

What's the testing facility for? We don't know. Are the white rats genetically engineered? They may be. The story is told through the perspective of the hero rat, so narrative answers like these aren't given. Yet the strange and alien world the rat finds himself in seems so utterly familiar within its alienation, partly because of its science fiction tropes and partly because the rats aren't just rats, they do have vestiges of anthropomorphic characterizations (which become more and more recognizable as the short goes on).

This alien/familiar dichotomy creates both wonder and fear, which is aided by the dark film noir quality of the outside of the facility and the washed-out white quality of the inside. No space really seems comfortable in this animation, which makes it terribly cynical. However, the ballet-quality exposition of the bag and the moment when the rats are together give it just enough hope for the audience to really relate to this rat's strange/familiar adventure, which makes the ending just that much more powerful. I don't know what it means, but I can't shake it from me.

--PolarisDiB

Lovely animation--okay story

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 26 February 2008]

This is a lovely film with very nice CG animation. It begins with a rat following a cheese puff wrapper across the roof tops in a big city. By accident, the rat falls into some weird fully automated lab filled with white lab rats. The new rat is captured but with the intervention of the same wrapper, he is able to try to make his escape.

How much you like this film will probably depend on your feelings about animals and animal testing. Though it's never clear what will happen to these rats, it seems as if the makers of the film have a strong anti-animal testing bias and it seems they are perhaps trying to influence the viewer accordingly. Because of my background in psychology (where we treated the rats wonderfully and didn't harm them in any way), I am always leery of films such as this one or THE SECRET OF NIMH that seem to offer simplistic messages that people who use lab animals are evil. However, I can't let my own background color my impression of this film too much. Despite a relatively weak story, the animation is super-impressive and the story well constructed. It is well worth a look.

This film is one of the bonus shorts included with the wonderful DVD "A Collection of 2006 Academy Award Nominated Short Films"--a must have for fans of the genre.

Cute and very well made. I enjoyed it and hope to see more from them.

[mdkarr · 10/10 · 7 February 2007]

This short was a pleasant surprise. What a great plot - very original. Who would have thought to make a short love film with rats. They are so misunderstood. I love fancy rats as pets and this short showed that these people know their "rat movements" and how they react to one another and that rats can love too. They looked very realistic like I could just reach out and pet one. They made their fur look soft. The city scape was very realistic and I found myself holding my breath when the little one fell into the science lab. The film movement was fluid and not jerky. The animation was very clean and had just enough shading to make everything look real. I hope to see more animations from them in the near future. Who knew bar codes could mean trouble in the end.

Beautiful and haunting

[valerie_lp · 10/10 · 13 May 2007]

I'm not an animation junkie, and spent this weekend in the theatre watching last year's Oscar shorts (live-action and animated) because it was free and I was bored. I believe ORS didn't even make it to the Oscars, though it was shortlisted. But it was, to me anyway, clearly the best thing in the animation category, and possibly of them all. It looks great--not too derivative, not too abstract or "cartoony," and definitely NOT like CGI. The surfaces are so real (fur, metal, glass) you feel like you can touch them, the contrasts between dark and light are expertly used, and the scene where the Cheeto is crushed in slow motion is simply beautiful. The music was perfectly suited to the action, almost another character in itself. And on top of it all, it has fast-paced suspense and a touching love story, with the right ending for a change (something far too many films featuring humans fail at). This film has stayed with me long after many of the others I saw that night have faded. I'm sure sure I'll buy it off iTunes...but I have to wait a bit, since it affected me so much I'm not sure I'm ready to watch it again yet!

Anoher film short with very modern and expert animation.

[TxMike · 30 October 2007]

This is the animated story of a rather ordinary big city rat, struggling to survive. Getting food is a big part of that effort.

There is an almost empty bag of cheese puffs, floating in the breeze, that catches the rat's attention. He sees the uneaten puff, and is attracted to it. The bag gets closer to a rotating roof ventilator, and the rat gets closer. Then, the bag slips through, and somehow the rat slips through also.

What transpires after that is the meat of the story. The city rat finds himself in a strange, sterile world, of white rats and laboratory robots. Each rat has a bar code attached. It is clearly some type of experimental laboratory, where the rats are administered various substances and their performance measured.

You have to watch the film to see what happens, it is very well animated, but havoc ensues. All the white rats are freed temporarily, and the city rat sees the one he has fallen in love with. While not everything is resolved to the satisfaction of the two rats, it is an interesting story, well-told in very nice animation.

This is part of a collection on DVD, "A Collection of 2006 Academy Award Nominated Short Films" from my local library.

A surprising change from a US based animation studio.

[jdmarkette · 10/10 · 10 October 2007]

I absolutely loved this animation when I first saw it at Siggraph 2006. Though I could easily consider it an animated work of art based on the visual aspects of it alone, the one thing I loved most about it was that the animation studio took a divergent path in telling a story that was more or less tragic, something which is normally left to Japanese animators. I think the American audience is still on the fence about considering animation as a valid medium of expression but hopefully films such as this might help pave the way. I also found it amazing that while the style was highly realistic both in appearance and behavior, the artists where able to successfully communicate emotion through simple gestures and small changes of expression. You never forget they are rats, but you given just enough visual cues to become involved without things resulting to typical disneyesque behavior. I think that's the reason that the film has garnered so much attention. I really hope to see more from this studio since they seem to have a pool of great talent across the board. As to though who still ask how anyone can get emotionally evolved with a story about rats, I think Roger Ebert said it best in his review of Grave of the Fireflies; "This film proves, if it needs proving, that animation produces emotional effects not by reproducing reality, but by heightening and simplifying it, so that many of the sequences are about ideas, not experiences."

Ah, Rats!

[ccthemovieman-1 · 5/10 · 26 July 2007]

Really, I am not dismissing or disrespecting this animated short. It is interestingly drawn and he story sucks you in and keeps you, but it is not appealing enough that I would want to watch it a second time.

The best thing I can say about this is that it held my attention all the way. The story isn't funny, isn't profound although it perhaps thinks it might be. It isn't as sad or romantic as some infer, either. I'm sorry, but I can't get choked up on a couple or rats who just met each other in a laboratory and are instantly in love, and then taken away.

This is another odd animated film, a serious tale about a rat who follows an empty bag of some snack, like a Cheeto's, that would have a scent that would attract a rodent. We follow the rat's interesting journey - which it is - as he follows the scent and discovers some strange sights.

splendid

[Kirpianuscus · 21 July 2018]

An impressive short animation. from atmosphere to each detail. for the impecable story . and for the great level of realism. a film about delicate manner to discover the near reality. soft, precise, using a familiar warning. proposing a small world , so obvious ignored. and an old fashion story. in a laboratory. in the hunt for a bag.