Aardman’s Darkside disappointment
(By Tarryn Saunders) The Moving Things programme offers a varied and exciting buffet of animated films. Unfortunately my first choice wasn’t the smartest one…
Film is not my usual territory, so I caught 2 film fundis, including a real live animator with an Irish accent, and took them along to the Labia Cinema on Orange Street to watch Aardman’s Darkside, a collection of little films from the award- winning animation company that created Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run.
But I think there is a reason why they chose to keep this particular collection in the dark, and it ought to go back there. The experience can be summarised perfectly by the audience comments, almost identical after every short film.
“Huh?”
“O..KAY…”
“Meh”
“Oh dear”
“WHAT on EARTH?”
And here and there a snort and a snigger.
The uncomfortable grunts of awkward misunderstanding and the unashamed outbursts of utter confusion were not part of some brilliantly dark comic genius plot with a secret cathartic existential message of the meaninglessness of life and art and fish and the audience themselves ironically reflecting on the search for answers in the flat screen of life and cheese and Dada Godot etc etc etc…
It was just silly. And not in a good way.
Alright, there were definitely bits of the good stuff that Aardman’s fans are used to, such as Angry Kid and Rex the Runt. But it wasn’t worth wading through the rest of the bog just to stumble across those ones.
“That was definitely student work. Imagine being a lecturer having to watch hours and hours of that…”
“If I had to wait for this to buffer on YouTube, I wouldn’t bother”
“I liked the bit with the horse.”
“I think I’ve had my twenty rands’ worth,” said Janice Honeyman, a woman whose words are not idly ignored. She left about 15 minutes into the film. Good call.
The rest of the audience, a host of imaginary friends, remained speechless.
But despite this episode, I’m still looking forward to the showings of Aardman’s Special Mix which contains the more established work. We’ll see some of my favourites like good old Shaun the Sheep. It’s Shaun the Sheep. Shaun the Sheep… (Cue catchy theme song)
Aardman’s Darkside:
Wednesday 7 September 12h00
Saturday 10 September 18h00
Aardman’s Special Mix: (watch this one)
Sunday 4 September 14h00
Tuesday 6 September 12h00
Saturday 10 September 12h00
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