oscaralbert Review of Negative Space

Negative Space (2017)

All of these other pundits who say that this cartoon takes five minutes . . .

[9/10 · 4 March 2018]

. . . to do what COCO requires a couple hours to accomplish seem to be a tad unfair to that animated feature film. While it's true that NEGATIVE SPACE also deals with the issue of human mortality, concluding with a snappier "punch line" than COCO, SPACE's brief running time doesn't allow much if any time for song and dance routines. (Though COCO may win an Oscar tonight, it's not necessarily even the most inspiring movie released during the past year about a kid playing a guitar: FOREVER MY GIRL may take the prize for that.) Despite the fact that no one will learn to play the guitar (or any other musical instrument) by devoting the five minutes necessary to enjoy NEGATIVE SPACE, if you pay attention you will pick up valuable tips about packing your luggage. (As for playing the guitar, COCO--to some extent--and FOREVER MY GIRL explicitly teach us that guitar playing is an innate skill, such as writing left-handed, running, or speaking in multiple languages: you're either born with such talents, or you're totally SOL and should NOT try to pound a square peg into your round zero of a skill set.)