User Reviews

A young girl aspires to be beautiful and have big feet, wearing big shoes despite her normal sized feet. She books in to have a foot enlargement operation, but is the ideal practical for day to day life.

This short was part of the 2003 series `animation in residence' or AIR for short, where graduate students are given a shot at a televised short film. The plot here is quite clever, it seems to refer to the body image ideals portrayed by the media, but it doesn't manage to really do anything with it. The punchline is obvious and doesn't act as comment, which I felt it should have done.

The animation is interesting but it is not really slick or professional looking - it did remind me that this was essentially a student film, regardless of her being a graduate or not. Overall it is worth seeing but it doesn't do as much as my first understanding of the plot led me to hope it would.

This short animation does not get full marks for its production slickness, however, I suspect that it was not conceived or budgeted with this in mind, and in other ways we are fully compensated. What the film does seem to possess is an originality of thought. Its theme, which is easily decoded as a warning about the shallowness of teenage or maybe pre-pubescent fashion dependency, is enacted as a comic and absurdist skit where the main character, a young girl, is determined to go to "any lengths" to get ahead/keep up with the in-crowd. It should be added that although there is a strong message being told here, it is set in an unusual visual context that gives a constant feeling of a childlike innocence at play, this is no strict morality tale. Instead we are on a journey where make-believe and reality have not yet divided, as in the 'adult world', and this imbues the tale with a certain otherworldly charm. The story might be summed up as a kind of wild swirling carousel journey with the gravity of the final message appearing as "be yourself".