It is an old joke about children and cats that you spend money on fancy toys to amuse them and what they end up most fascinated by is the box. It is not really something that I see being true as much as perhaps it once was since a ride on a train or plane will show you that children as young as 3 or 4 are au fait with tablets and phones to play all manner of games on. Anyway this short reminds us this joke and more importantly of the idea that childhood is a time for imagination, creation and wonder, not for gadgets and being indoors.
It does this through a series of short snippets of the different way the boy uses the box, whether to be a race car, a jail cell and many other things which come to him. They are edited together well with a dainty but cheerful score and I liked it as a flow with my only gripe being that they were not so amazingly clever that I needed more and more of them once I had got the point. I say this because it does run a few minutes longer than it needed even though it is still pretty short. The ending when it comes is nicely done.
The irony about the celebration of imagination of the use of such a box is that the film itself is an entry in a contest meant to highlight the power of a gadget, since this film was entirely shot on a Nokia. This is impressive not just because the film looks very good (though it does) but moreso because it is well shot with good selections, good editing and generally nicely put together; so in fairness the short still shows that imagination and creativity is necessary to get the best use of the technology – the device will not do it for you.
Although it does run longer than it needs to, this short is a cheery and well made salute to the power of the imagination of childhood.