| Animation fans will remember the outstanding short film Creature Comforts (1989), which put genuine, often barely coherent man-on-the-street dialogue into the mouths of various zoo animals made out of modelling clay.
Animator Nick Park (famous for the Wallace & Gromit films) acquired recorded interviews with several random people and created a wonderful montage of tortoises, jaguars and polar bears all discussing their living conditions with the kind of halting, bewildered speech patterns that we all use, but which screenwriters can never seem to entirely capture. Thus, the creatures of Creature Comforts struggle over words, repeat themselves, take lengthy pauses or prattle on about topics they know nothing about, simply because there is a microphone thrust in their face. The result is genuinely charming and it won an Oscar in 1990 for Best Animated Short.
I’ve been a fan of Creature Comforts ever since I first saw it at an animation festival the year of its release, but until this month, I had no idea that a spinoff TV series existed. This week, with the North American DVD release of Creature Comforts: The Complete First Season (2003), Canadians will finally be able to enjoy this recent British series, which does a fine job of capturing the appeal of the original short.
Along with the five-minute original, this disc contains all 13 episodes of the program, each instalment running about nine minutes. Even with all of this expanded screen time, these colourful clay beasties don’t wear out their welcome and you’ll find yourself giving in to the urge to watch multiple episodes in a single sitting. The characters are new and no longer confined to the zoo – you’ll see a performing seal at the circus, a family of anemones on the beach, a unicellular organism floating on a microscope slide, a seeing-eye dog and even a couple of space aliens, just for variety.
Each episode explores a theme, described by such titles as "Working Animals," "Feeding Time" and "Pets at the Vets." The scenarios can be quite inspired – I particularly like the lab rat in the maze, going on about popular misconceptions regarding genetic engineering, while another rat with a big ear growing out of its back wanders over and listens. In another bit, a garden slug looks nervously at a ladybug that keeps scuttling towards him. When the bug finally reaches him and crawls up his slimy back, the look of revulsion on his little slug face is hilarious. Certain recurring characters prove so endearing that they appear again and again throughout the series, such as the two mongrels in a dumpster, a lazy cat-and-dog duo bickering on a couch (voiced by an old married couple, no doubt), and a greyhound at the starting gate of a race, who always has to dash off before completing the gist of his statements.
Fans of Park might be worried by the fact that he has handed over directorial duties to fellow Aardman Studios animator Richard "Golly" Goleszowski, but only if they happen to be ignorant of Goleszowski’s previous accomplishments, including the twisted Rex the Runt (1998) series, and the utterly brilliant Robbie the Reindeer in "Hooves of Fire" (1999). Golly’s stuff is always a treat to watch, and his current project, Tortoise vs. Hare (2007) sounds like a wow. As a huge fan of both animators, I can assure you that the Creature Comforts franchise is in very good hands, indeed.
The menu screen for selecting individual episodes of Creature Comforts: The Complete First Season is unnecessarily awkward, but other than that, this is a fine disc. If you’re at all eager to see Park’s upcoming Wallace & Gromit movie The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), you should check out this series the next time you visit the video store. |
Copyright ©2005 FFWD. All rights reserved.