Pearl

This short film played for me like a long television commercial for some car. The entire film was set within this one car and in it you see a man and his daughter age over two decades. It's extremely sentimental and clearly is the type thing that is meant to tug at your heart. But there is a certain familiarity about sort of theme and the animation quality was severely lacking. The filmmakers chose to use cel shading (a popular style a decade or more ago in many video games) but it's not even good cel shading. The overall effort looks like a nice student film and again I was left wondering how the short was nominated for such an important award. There's absolutely nothing to dislike about the film but nothing to inspire or transcendent about it either.

Of all the nominees this year, most are a rather sad lot. I predict "Piper" will take home the Oscar and if it doesn't, I will try to update my review.