This year’s annual line up of 16 short animations from around the world (nominally for children) opened with a little ditty reminding kids “Don’t Sit Under The Poo Tree” (2012). I laughed, before the reviewer corrected me that this “is not funny and that poo jokes aren’t meant to be songs”. The chorus of laughter from the 2-6 year olds that made up most of the audience begged to differ. However this is Theodore’s take – despite rightly recognising that a critic’s role isn’t always to be popular, he had some positive things to say about this collection.

As a whole there were “some boring, some good and some that made me sleepy” films. The boring ones apparently “lacked oomph” – conversely, “Hair” (2013) was judged to have it in spades. “Hair”, which we had in fact seen before as an interlude song between shows on Disney Jnr, is a colour-saturated animation with one box singing about the many hairstyles he could have. On the big screen, it’s even better. “My favourite one was when his hair was a fish. It was funny, cool and reminded me of Will.i.am; he’s cool, he has cool hair, I like him”.

“There were sad ones too, the cat and boat one was sad.” That’s “The Gallant Captain” (2013) reminiscent of both Sendak and Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are with a simple premise of a young boy heading out on his own adventure and realising real life can be magical if you just imagine it a little differently. It tells the story of a boy who misses his father, who is lost at sea, and decides he can go out and find him whilst fighting off the “baddie ships” with a single rubber band.

Impossible for the reviewer to describe any other way than as “the elephant one”, Nicolas Deveaux’s “7 tonnes 3” (2013) is an elegant but immensely satisfying 3D animation consisting of simple elements. Theodore was left wondering if “the elephants really could bounce on the trampoline like that and do flips too?”, noting that it was both “funny and kind of amazing”. Deveaux’s “5m80” is likely to wow the reviewer even more, working as it does on the concept of giraffes + high-diving.

However: “Not many of the films were scary enough. The Avengers is scary, well not scary for me, but it’s scary”. The realness of the animation may have led Theo to expect that the filmmakers (or the curators) might have tried to give their young audience a few scares, and that ended up being one of the morning’s drawbacks.

Interestingly, most of these films lacked dialogue, but I think as a selection of films for young kids, this was a good idea. Kids tend to talk through movies and do so loudly, so not having to follow a dialogue while telling the reviewer to stop jumping on the seat is ideal – plus, it might leave more to the fledgling imagination. Conversely, Theodore thought this was “boring and less interesting - the funniest films need to say something funny” but also that “the films were interesting to look at. I think Tom (our 5 year old cousin) would like these movies and also other kids aged 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10”.

Despite the reviewer’s narrow 6-year range of appreciation, I greatly enjoyed these films and truly believe that many adults will. Theodore picked out some of the best - “Hair” really was great entertainment, “7 tonnes 3” was spectacular to watch, and “The Gallant Captain” stuck with you as a classic, imaginative adventure story.

Best of all, the highlights of this year’s programme might make other kids reach the final conclusion that Theodore did. “I could make a film like this one day, a good one, which needs to have funniness, sadness, happiness and scariness”.

NZIFF: Toons For Tots
Various Directors, 2013-14, 63 minutes
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