One Rat short (2006)

Simply A Masterpiece

Good movie but grossly overrated

best movie i've ever seen.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

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.

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."

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.

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!