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Like last year, I went to a special showing of the Oscar-nominated animated short films. However, unlike last year, in addition to the nominees, several "commended films" were also shown. Surely there must have been quite a few better animated short films than JOHN AND KAREN made from 2007-2008. Yet, oddly, this film was a so-called "commended film" by the Oscar nominating committee. This means that while not nominated for the Best Animated Short Oscar, it was close to being good enough for nomination.The film consists of a polar bear and a penguin having an awkward tea party. It seems that they were in a relationship together and the polar bear did something stupid and the entire film consists of their trying to patch things up and work through whatever had occurred.As for the quality of the film, the animation was very poor and it's rare to see animation of this quality to be so recognized. The story is also very, very slight and the only real gimmick is how stilted and awkward the conversation is--and this idea gets pretty thin pretty quickly. Why it was chosen is beyond me, as many lovely films didn't get recognized--yet this amazingly ordinary film was. Overall, it's watchable and mildly interesting--and that's all.Oh, and despite this cartoon and a Coke ad to the contrary, Polar Bears live exclusively in the Northern hemisphere and penguins in the Southern hemisphere--not that this makes or breaks the cartoon.
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