Myron Clemons
A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
Darin
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
RResende
The possibilities of animation in building different worlds or simply different relations between common elements of our world (like this case) are infinite. One of more common tricks is animate pieces of our daily life and establish special relations between them and us. I remember a little beautiful film where that worked perfectly, In Memoriam, because it addressed directly the theme: it was about a puppeteer whose puppets gained life behind his back, to fulfill his dearest dreams. Here the association is quite based on the simple playing with the scale of the snails in relation to the boy, and the simulation of the circus with the possibilities of a simple house in the tree. It is not immediately a fascinating set up, but i think it is doable what they intended. But the set is not interesting enough, i think the rendering of the space lacks contrasts, and some darkness to every color. Actually there is one interesting scene: one snail, jumping high, the camera starts the scene looking down and sweeps until we see the snail in counter light, against a hole in the house's ceiling. It was good because the light simulates a circus limelight. Other than this, the movements were quite poor, i think one can expect more of a digital animations that deliberately addresses such a motion related theme as circus acrobatics.My opinion: 2/5 (Cinanima 2009)http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com
