Search - World's Greatest Animation on DVD

Hardly the world?s greatest ? but it has some real gems

Itamar Katz | Ramat-Gan, Israel | 04/25/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The Film Board of Canada picked a pretentious title for this DVD; quite often it justifies itself, but of course not at all times. This is, of course, not `the world's greatest animation'; it's a collection of animation shorts that were nominated for an Academy Award between 1978 and 1990 - predominantly Canadian. Many of the films are Oscar winners, but from some years only a nominee was included, which makes you wonder who exactly made the selection.Still, `The World's Greatest Animation' does indeed boast some masterpiece works. The first one that comes to mind is the celebrated `Creature Comforts' (1990), a fantastic, hilarious masterpiece of claymotion that set Nick Park (of Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run fame) on the road to success. It's not, however, the only creation worthy of notice on the DVD. `The Cat Came Back' (Cordell Barker, 1988) is a personal favorite of mine; it has a wonderfully stylish, nervous animation style, and great, creative character design (though only two active characters), not to mention hilarious slapstick and a brilliantly catchy title tune. `Your Face' (1987) is a great musical number by the grand master Bill Plympton (`I Married A Strange Person', `The Tune' and many others, as well as many of MTV's wonderful animation sequences of the late 80's), and like all of Plympton's work it's devilishly inventive and gloriously naughty; though I wouldn't call it Bill's best (I liked '25 Ways To Quit Smoking'), his animation is always a pleasure and `Your Face' is a great showcase of his unique talent for those who are not familiar. And `Charade' (MinVintonis, 1984) is hardly an animation masterpiece, but it's brilliantly, brilliantly funny.Then, there's the grim, serious stuff. `Tango' (Rybczynski, 1982) is absolutely ingenious; it put me in a complete trance for a full eight minutes. It's a stroke of creative genius that has to be seen to believed. Then there's `Balance' (Lauenstein, 1989), which, like many other reviewers noted, can be seen either as an important statement or as pretentious pseudo-philosophy. Whichever way you look at it, it's still visually stunning and very original; and even if you'll find it superficial and pretentious, you won't be able to resist a little smile of amusement at the end of it. Other interesting, thought-provoking works include `Crac!' (Back, 1981) and `The Fly' (Rofuscz, 1980).The collection weakness is that so many of the others seem like fillers. Most of them are amusing and enjoyable, many are very well-made visually, or well written; but in the end, they are very forgettable, and hardly unique. `A Greek Tragedy' (Van Goethem, 1986), `Special Delivery' (Wheldon and Macaulay, 1978), `Sundae In New York' (Picker, 1983), `Every Child' (Fedorenco and Lamb, 1979) and `The Big Snit' (Condie, 1985) all fall into that category. On the other hand, `Anna & Bella' (Ring, 1985) and `The Great Cognito' (Vinton, 1985) are delightfully original and beautiful, but have absolutely nothing to say. `Technological Threat' (Koyer, 1988) is so mediocre I can't understand how it made its way into the collection.For the art and animation student or simply enthusiast, `The World's Greatest Animation' does contain some must-see material (although many of the best ones can be obtained elsewhere: `Creature Comforts' can be found on its own self-titled collection of Nick Park shorts, and `Your Face' can be found on Plympton's collection DVD titled `Plymptoons'), and is well worth owning. Much of the material, though is not essential, and is good for one watch."