CREATURE COMFORTS ***1/2 (out of ****)
				“Not Without My Handbag” Directed by Boris Kossmehl & written by Kossmehl and Andrea Friedrich 1993 “Adam” Directed & written by Peter Lord 1991
		“Creature Comforts” Directed, written, & animated by Nick Park 1989 “Wat’s Pig” Directed & written by Peter Lord 1996 NR (should by G or PG)
	What bright, colorful, delightful little entertainments!  The DVD of “Creature Comforts” contains four animated short films from Nick Park and Peter Lord of Aardman Animation, those mad geniuses who created “Chicken Run” and “Wallace & Gromit.”  Like “Wallace & Gromit,” the vignette-sized fables that comprise “Creature Comforts” are wondrously child-like, yet not childish, and simple, but not simplistic.  And if I sounded like something of a humbug when I discussed the look of anime in “Neon Genesis Evangelion” and “Ghost in the Shell,”allow me to redeem myself by gushing over the adorable clay animation of “Creature Comforts.”  For a scant 35 minutes—not nearly long enough—we’re treated to cheerfully made knights, devils, pigs, middle-aged English aunties, carnivorous purses, penguins, conniving monarchs, and Adam.  All of them have bright eyes and big mouths, and spend a lot of time gawking.  And all of them are just a little satirical. The preferred medium of Park and Lord is stop-motion animation, using clay figurines and little model sets, with the occasional bit of traditional animation thrown into the background.  The process is, of course, amazingly tedious to create—it took something like three years to make the 89 minute “Chicken Run”—but the results are so cute and ingenius.  Watching “Creature Comforts,” I never stopped smiling. The cavalcade of whimsy begins with the short film “Creature Comforts,” winner of the 1990 Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.  In it we follow an unseen reporter as she interviews various animals at a London zoo.  A tiger bemoans his inability to get fresh meat, a ‘possum swarmed with offspring complains that she doesn’t get out very much, and koalas wear eyeglasses.  If you begin to feel that the voices and ramblings of these critters have a strange authenticity, don’t be surprised:  their monologues are recordings of interviews made throughout a London neighborhood. Next is “Wat’s Pig,” about two medieval princes separated at birth.  The brother raised in the castle grows up to be cowardly and power-hungry, while the one on the farm is raised by a friendly, smiling pig.  “Wat’s Pig” is the most fable-ish of the vignettes and could have been heavy-handed, but something about the short’s complete absence of dialogue made it so much easier to swallow.  The coward has no need of his brother until a gigantic knight from a neighboring kingdom shows him a map that says “Youre Lande” and “My Lande.”  The knight’s gestures make it clear that he intends to make everything “His Lande.” My favorite of the selections is “Not Without My Handbag,” the only film not the direct work of Nick Park and Peter Lord.  It’s creator, Boris Kossmehl, prefers what look to be model figurines over clay characters, and the look of his little world can only be described as Tim Burton-esque.  In a way-out house of rhomboid walls, blue shadows, and high ceilings, we meet a little girl and her auntie, both with big eyes and stubby little limbs.  It seems the auntie has failed to make her last payment on her washing machine.  Unfortunately for her, the fine print in her contract specifies that any payment failure results in her going directly to Hell.  This is where we discover, as we’ve always suspected, that the devil is French. What ensues is a caper on both sides of eternity.  Like Wallace in “Wallace & Gromit,” the aunt’s bourgeois Englishness knows no bounds.  She is content with going to Hell as long as she has a matching handbag, and returns to the world of the living as a fleshless zombie in order to retrieve it.  When her niece remarks on her skinless, eyeless condition, she merely responds that “a nice cup of tea and a lie-down” will set her to rights. The collection ends with “Adam,” in which the Hand of God (played from the elbow-down by Nick Upton, who was Pa Thumb in “The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb”) creates a hapless little man of clay on what looks more like the moon than the Earth.  In wordless pantomime, with nothing more than the clay beneath him, Adam quickly rises from the level of an animal, learns mischief, learns that destruction is self-destructive, and is finally given the perfect (?) mate. The heavily-touted, “cutting-edge” animated films of 2000 and 2001 were the digitally-realized “Titan A.E.” and “Final Fantasy:  The Spirits Within.”  Both opened to lukewarm critical and box-office success, and were soundly trounced by Aardman’s “Chicken Run.”  The gloomy, violent, and machine-oriented mechanisms of “Titan” and “Final Fantasy” were no match for the genuine joy of “Chicken Run;” their computer images couldn’t compare with the vibrancy and peculiarities of handmade clay.  I happily anticipate the next burst of sound and fury from Squaresoft, the company that brought us “Final Fantasy” and a segment of “The Animatrix.”  But, for the next thing to come from Aardman, I’m downright eager. Finished September 18, 2003 Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night                                                                                        Back to home.