Jason Sondhi

As promised, another review. One Rat Short is a visual tour de force, a real feast for the eyes. Ostensibly a love story about two star-crossed rats that must overcome the forces that separate them, the plot is mostly a setup for the action. But what action! CG animation which displays a level of detail and realism that, combined with its kinetic cinematography, is much more reminiscent of video game animation than Pixar.

The plot itself is somewhat weak, yet still engrossing. A brown street rat, living in the midst of gritty urban decay, stumbles into a pristine research lab. The lab’s white rats are all at the mercy of the central research computer responsible for managing the lab. It is actually very similar in look to the ship’s computer in Wall-E, coincidentally enough. As an invader, the brown rat must grapple with the sinister central computer in order to get close to his object of affection, and they team up to try and win their freedom.

The most interesting aspect of the film is the decision to not anthropomorphize the rats, which creates a completely different feel for the film than might otherwise have been attained. The rats look, move and gesticulate as rats do. The lack of words, or truly human emotions though, makes selling the central love story of the film a bit problematic. To see rats behave genuinely like rats, only to occasionally exchange longing gazes, is a bit incongruent. The animation really helps to punctuate these emotions felt throughout the film though. Several close-ups and artfully posed shots, combined with truly superb lighting effects boldly exteriorize the interior drama.

The film is a product of a studio named Charlex Films based out of New York. According to their website, Charlex has a distinguished history in the advertising biz, and One Rat Short is the fruit of their experiments in longer-form CG, with the hope of leveraging this experiment into longer narrative work. The advertising background makes sense while watching the film, because the concept is so simple. 2 minutes could probably have been shed off the final runtime, but in a showcase piece, a certain level of extravagance is only to be expected.

And as a showpiece for what the studio can do, the film is truly excellent. As previous studios have shown, a killer short film can be a great calling card for getting both the experience and backing to tackle a more major project. Blue Sky Studio is the obvious parallel here. They won attention and fame as well as an Oscar in 1998 for their short film Bunny. Four years later Ice Age was a hit in theaters.

One Rat Short did not win an Oscar, but it is featured on Magnolia Pictures DVD of the 2006 Oscar Short Film Nominees as a bonus film. Consider supporting short film by buying the DVD.