Schädlinge

I suffered through this drivel when it was presented this weekend as filler for a screening of academy nominated shorts. The animation quality was fine, I'm not going to bother commenting on that. It was nothing earth shattering, but it was competent. But the content of this short was simply awful. A banal, simple-minded "cities bad, trees good" feel-bad story with absolutely no clear message. The only thing I could figure out they were trying to say was that environmentalists are starting a Scientology-like cult and waiting for some weird aliens to come and collect them in their pods. Horrible from beginning to end. On the plus side, it elevated my opinion of every single other animated short I watched that evening because at least it wasn't as horrific as this junk.

This film was made completely without dialog or narration. It's a tale about some possum-like creatures who inhabit a non-industrialized world. This idyllic world is shattered by a massive city that is much like the oppressively dark one from the film BRAZIL. Slowly, the life of the creatures becomes worse and worse and worse due to pollution and over-industrialization-leading you to wonder if there is there any hope?

Wow, were the other two reviews for VARMINTS brutal!! While I would agree that the film was far from subtle and suffers from an overly simplistic "industrialization is bad" message, giving the film a one or two is just mean! After all, even if you don't like the story, any reasonable person would admit that the CGI is lovely and the music quite evocative. While few films can come close to equaling the quality of Pixar or Dreamworks, this film manages to come awfully close and the art work is very engrossing. In fact, the film is good enough to have earned the Oscar nomination instead of just the "commended" status like it did. Now I am NOT saying that it's as good as many of the nominees, but it certainly was better than at least one or two of them purely from a technical standpoint.

Sure, the message was far from subtle and too preachy, but you can't just write off a film because of this--there is far more to this film than that.

Absolutely beautiful animation. The gritty, industrial parts are gritty, metallic and cold. The beautiful parts are warm, free and ethereal. The characters are clever and expressive. I could have watched for an hour. The music is great too. This is just an amazing piece of work. I'm so glad I got to see this again. Thanks to the Atlanta Film Festival for bringing this animation back to Atlanta! There is also an illustrated book of the same title by Helen Ward and Marc Craste. Some view this animation as social or political commentary, and I suppose you could look at it that way. But the commentary, I believe, is about the extremes. As they say, "Everything in moderation."

It's clear the creators of this film put a lot of themselves into this work. It's a shame they didn't put more of a story in as well.

While the art style is unarguably beautiful, this film is a heavy-handed and ultimately unmoving sermon on the evils of industrial society. It's never explained how or why the "Varmint" creatures suddenly decide to erect the city, it's never explained why they ever decided to live there, or why they don't leave or change their routine when things go wrong. There is no clear reason for any part of this story to happen. A city appears because it -must- appear, the creatures fall ill because the directors need some sort of "evil" to threaten the main character... who then totally fails to act in any meaningful way. Every action only exists to underline the movie's blatantly obvious message, or display some decently rendered but still meaningless moment of artistic skill.

The most infuriatingly clichéd and trite moment is the random "love interest" who exists for no reason and has even less of a personality than the lead. Her presence changes nothing, prevents nothing, and accomplishes nothing.

A bland and hollow endeavor, lacking any true emotional connection.

This is a beautifully done film. There is no dialog, just music and sound effects. The themes of losing humanity in technology has been done before, but not quite like this. The story is told in a surreal, poetic way. The setting is an unknown place or planet where an unspecified creature lives in an idyllic, green setting. Soon another race of creatures appears in a black cloud on the horizon. They build what looks like a city of skyscrapers, destroying the natural setting. The plot goes on from there and resolves in an unexpected way. The exact plot is not clearly explained, and does not need to be.I found it very moving and engaging, as did the audience I saw it with.

The film is a work of art. The author who left the previous comment must have a heart of stone not have enjoyed it. I have no idea how or why he seemed to get the ridiculous notion it had something to do with Scientology or cults.