Accidents, Blunders and Calamities (2015) User Reviews

A modern fable

[Imdbidia · 7/10 · 8 January 2017]

This animated short film succeeds at creating a modern tale with a Beatrix-Potter feeling, and a philosophical life lesson.

The film uses a mix of stop motion animation, normal filming, and digital manipulation to create a charming traditional tale and animation movie that brings to life the three possums and other animals in the story. It remeinds me, in a way, of the animation in the series Minuscule.

The story seems taken from an old folk tale or Aesop book, but it is actually quite modern. The story begins with a father telling his kids a tale about the horrid humans, and then provides an A-Z ways of being killed by a human. The film has a moral, in this case a philosophical lesson, that is universally valid -- crap happens, even when you know it is coming and you prepare against in advance, life is unpredictable. Also you cannot live in fear or stop doing what you want for fear of something bad will happen to you. The moral lesson is mostly given to adults, even though this film seems directed to kids.

Very charming.

Depressing, but not depressingly good

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 31 May 2017]

"Accidents, Blunders and Calamities" is a 5-minute animated short film from New Zealand. This one came out two years ago, back in 2015, and brought writer and director James Cunningham a solid deal of awards attention. It is probably his most known work at this point. the cast includes children as voice actors who have the same name and perhaps they are his children. Anyway, this is the story of a possum dad who tells his children a fairly dark good night story about all kinds of ways in which all kinds of animals die, usually through accidents caused by men or things created by men. And the ending is even darker I assume, but not too unexpected. I personally must say while the voice acting, animation and writing of the words are fairly solid that this film even begin to drag at this extremely short runtime. I guess you can check it out once and that is certainly enough. You also won't be missing too much if you skip it as it is basically just a collection of many really brief snippets put together and there is no coherent story in here and the film's message is also nothing special. Thumbs down from me, can't agree with the awards bodies here and I hope Cunningham, who has been extremely prolific in recent years, will step things up in the future.

about life

[Kirpianuscus · 21 July 2018]

An useful short film. for discover the impact of small gestures, about the fragility of life, for the form of fairy tale and for the end, almost expected. admirable cinematography and wise message. but the final impression is the missing of something . but, far by good intentions, the film remains a real special one.