Moongirl (2005) User Reviews

A Nutshell Review: Moongirl

[DICK STEEL · 5/10 · 21 November 2006]

The short animated film Moongirl, while beautifully CG created, rings hollow. I think nowadays beautifully rendered CGI graphics do not cut it anymore if it doesn't come with a compelling enough story to engage an audience.

Not that Moongirl's story doesn't work. but I feel that it's more for the kids, and it's an opportunity for the filmmakers to flex those artistic muscles in creating fairly complex visuals. I thought the little twist at the end was quite neat, but besides that, there's nothing much to move the narrative along.

Strictly as a show-reel, and nothing more.

Eh

[cherold · 5/10 · 24 January 2017]

Having seen several Laika productions, I was intrigued to learn they'd made a short, so I found it on youtube. It's very disappointing.

The disjointed story involves a boy out night fishing who winds up on the moon. The story reminded me a little of an episode of Axecop, only that series is purposely nonsensical while this one seemed to be going for a sense of wonder and failing. There's no attempt at character building beyond giving one kid a cloying southern accent, and the story feels like it should have either been long enough to fully explore the concept or about 50 seconds long so it would just flash by with some striking visuals.

The end result looks kind of nice but, as another reviewer here noted, has no heart at all.

An underwhelming short

[r96sk · 5/10 · 3 January 2021]

Not that you'd expect much from this, but 'Moongirl' is an underwhelming short. It did kickstart Laika's work so that's something. It has a potentially interesting idea, but it never made an impact on me. The animation isn't all that, either.

The final twist somewhat saves it

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 21 May 2017]

"Moongirl" is an American 8.5-minute animated short film from 2005, so this one is already more than a decade old and if you take a look at the names who made this and also voice-acted in here you will perhaps recognize them from the Oscar-nominated Coraline. So the tone here is slightly similar, not really that scary or creepy perhaps, even if the antagonist is somewhat eerie admittedly. Maybe "Moonboy" would have been a better title here, especially with the development at the very end, but I must say I enjoyed the watch somehow. I would still agree with some of the other reviewers who said that the plot and story weren't the biggest strength here, but well it is beautiful to watch and even if I initially struggled a bit with the character design this also grew on me the longer the film went on. But the sets and sceneries are all really nice to look at. The carousel moment at the end is not as memorable as it could have been which is a bit of a shame as the story just doesn't live up to truly making an emotional impact and this also applies to the moment, also relatively late, where we see all the glasses. Anyway, the final twist with Moongirl leaving and handing it over the the protagonist was a nice one that finally made me decide to go for 3 stars out of 5 because I think that even if this is by no means a truly great film the positive still outweighs the negative and it is certainly worth checking out. Especially animation lovers can give it a got. I give "Moongirl" a thumbs-up.

Good looking short in search of a story

[dbborroughs · 3/10 · 17 September 2006]

This 8 minute short from the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach is a bit of a disappointment. The film which concerns a young boy out fishing at night who is whisked away to the moon, where he meets the title character and has to fight off an evil monster looks very good. Some of the imagery, such as the catfish constellation coming to life is purely magical.

The problem is that the film has huge gaps in its plot that its difficult to enjoy. Its as if director Henry Selick only had so much film to use and no more. While the gaps in logic may allow for some visually stunning it leaves this viewer shaking his head wondering about things like if the moon is a paper lantern how does it have a dark side? And whats the deal with the whole moongirl/moonboy thing anyway? I know its a short film and one can't really discus or over analyze anything this short, but there should at least be some internal consistency, which there is not.

Recently released to DVD with a children's picture book of the story I found the book to be better than the film since the flat nature and snap shot effect of the paintings allowed the plot holes to drop away since on the page we can't see everything.

Read the book and skip the movie since its yet another of several recent children's stories (the most recent is Lady in the Water) that should have never have been turned into a film.

Grrrrr...

[promotions-14 · 4/10 · 7 October 2005]

I saw this before a screening of Strings at Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX. Sure, you can create neato animated characters. Sure, you can have a cute little storyline. Sure, you can make it. You can find and pay animators to create it. But, this short has no heart... it just frankly doesn't work. The crowd didn't laugh, smile, clap... nothing... And my heart felt empty after watching it. On a different note, I liked Corpse Bride fairly well though not great. But Moongirl is a huge waste of time and money. It feels like a marketing ploy. Let's throw a bunch of cuteness at the audience. They'll love it. But you don't feel the love of the director or animators. Its totally flat.

There is just something missing...

[withloveandviol · 4/10 · 5 May 2020]

What starts out as a whimsical short story about a young boy travelling to the moon with his flying squirrel, Earl quickly turns to a thing of nightmares when he is quite literally catfished to the moon and realises he is trapped there indefinitely with ghosts outside.

There are so many aspects of this I want to like - how the moon is essentially made of paper and has a large carousel inside, how a young girl is responsible for keeping the moonlit with fireflies, but there is just something missing. Perhaps this is because the entire film is only 9 minutes long and there's no capacity to build on characters and plot points...or explain the terrible southern accent.

The animation, for as late as 2005, is confusing. With Laika being producing The Corpse Bride this same year, there seems to be no excuse as to why something so poor would be allowed a pass. The close-ups of Earl and the ghosts - or Gargaloons are the only redeeming feature but don't look at the giant cat too hard.

Finally, the only other saving grace is the involvement of They Might be Giants to perform the Soundtrack which if at least the story doesn't make much sense, there's some nice atmospheric music in the background.