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For what this movie is trying to be, I don’t think it takes many missteps. It is sweet, cute, and gorgeously made. The animation is truly stunning. I think the movie pretty brilliantly captures movement as the “camera” swings around the space the characters are operating in. It really takes advantage of the medium of animation in a way that’s entirely cinematic and rarely executed. It also sounds pretty stellar. The score is sweeping and beautiful, and the sound edit is really creative and made me giggle with some fun effect noises. The first half hour with cute baby duck was great. I didn’t come around on older duck until the training sequence which was pretty awesome. The song that played was lovely, and that was one of the most beautiful sequences visually as well. I thought the movie peaked with that scene and the following departure though. Every scene that came after that felt pretty obvious and lacked much nuance. The angry lonely fox learns to make friends. The animals learn to get along instead of eating each other (but like they still have to eat right?). The robot learns to break her programming to take good care of the duck. It’s really basic and simple and not challenging at all! Maybe my expectations were just a bit out of whack considering the festival hype, but I did come out of this a bit disappointed considering how strong the reviews are. It’s a really nice movie that I like and am glad exists. It just lacks any type of storytelling ambition aside from the visuals that make it stand out for me. Robot Dreams clears easily.
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