It's been six years since the first "Love, Death+Robots," and the series is back with ten new shorts. Many of them are directed by familiar names from the previous volumes. Unfortunately, most of the shorts feel like brief teases or animation tests instead of anything substantive. However, there are a few highlights that deserve their due.
Here we go:
1. "Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners" - It's Aardman's "Creature Comforts" with gadgets and appliances! It's all CGI, but they're definitely aping Aardman's clay character designs. This being "Love Death+Robots," most of the humor is sexual and/or sophomoric, but the execution is great. Multiple comedians were recruited for the gadgets, including Kevin Hart as an ionizer, Ronnie Chieng as a toothbrush, Brett Goldman as a toilet, Josh Brener as a showerhead, Nat Faxon as an abandoned waffle iron, Amy Sedaris as a paranoid security camera, and Niecy Nash Betts as a vibrator.
2. "How Zeke Got Religion" - Easily the best animated short of the bunch on a technical level, with character designs that look vaguely reminiscent of "Archer" at a few points. This isn't one of the stronger shorts simply based on story or concept. However, if you like your gore, your monsters, and your WII aircraft, this is not one to miss. This is a properly horrific piece of animation on a level we don't see very often, with kudos to the effects animators and the sound designers in particular.
3. "The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur" - Of course Tim Miller would be directing the one with all the naked chicks fighting in a gladiatorial arena with a horde of dinosaurs, and an emcee voiced by (and clearly intended to look like) Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson. However, points for having all of the Bai Ling character's dialogue in Mandarin, and for committing to an absolutely ridiculous premise as hard as they possibly could. I was thoroughly entertained for fifteen minutes, which is all I can ask for.
4. "The Other Large Thing" - A cat voiced by Chris Parnell and a robot voiced by John Oliver plot to take over the world. This is supposed to be a prequel to the "Three Robots" shorts though that's not made apparent enough here. Anyway, we finally get to see what the humans looked like in this world before the apocalypse, and it's not a pretty sight. The story boils down to a few silly gags, but Chris Parnell and John Oliver do a lot to help sell it. I only wish this were a little longer and more fleshed out.
5. "400 Boys" - Robert Valley has been one of the more dependable "Love, Death+Robots" directors, with "Zima Blue" and "Ice." This time around, we've got street gangs warring with each other in a post-Apocalyptic world, who find themselves up against a new nightmare enemy that manifests as giant babies. None of it made much sense to me, but it all looks fantastic. I'm putting it in the top half of the list just based on the effortlessly cool visuals.
6. "Close Encounters of the Mini Kind" - This is essentially "Night of the Mini Dead" from Volume III again, except with an alien invasion instead of a zombie apocalypse. The style, many of the gags, and the plot beats are exactly the same, right down to the ending. However, the short delivers its share of laughs and the premise still works fine. It also functions very well as a cohesive story, which is more than I can say for some of the titles in this batch of "Love, Death+Robots."
7. "Spider Rose" - This is the Jennifer Yuh Nelson directed short this year, and it lost me almost immediately because of the title character, one of those super-angsty warrior babes that are all over this genre. And "Spider Rose" isn't one of the better ones. Anyway, the story centers on what's essentially a "Lilo & Stitch" situation with a mean little twist ending. The critter is cute and the animation is solid enough, so I can see this short working fine for someone else.
8. "For He Can Creep" - Now here's a curiosity. This is one of the more ambitious shorts, depicting a battle between Satan and a cat for the soul of a poet. However, it's too much story crammed into too little runtime, and there are too many distracting visuals that are difficult to parse. Satan can bend reality to his whims. The cat and its friends seem to have powers that aren't explained. It's all CGI, but with woodcut textures everywhere? The result is visual chaos.
9. "Golgotha" - Luma Pictures is better known as an effects house, which explains why they decided to go with a photorealistic style, including a main character who is a distracting digital recreation of actor Rhys Darby. So much effort was spent on making sure everything looked good, and the storytelling feels like an afterthought. The big reveal absolutely did not come off the way the short's creators intended.
10. "Can't Stop" - This is just a Red Hot Chili Peppers music video. David Fincher just took the band's performance at Slane Castle and redid it with everyone as marionette versions of themselves. That's it. Why is this part of "Love, Death+Robots"? Do marionettes count as robots? I don't think so.
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