MOVIE REVIEW : Familiar Fare at Animation Festival

Over the years, the annual “Festival of Animation” has become an important showcase in Southern California for short films from around the world. Although it includes a few outstanding pictures, the 1991 “Festival,” which opens today at the State Theater in Pasadena, gives the impression of having been thrown together.

Three of the films (the 1933 Betty Boop “Snow White,” Jan Svankmajer’s “Dimensions of Dialogue” and Nick Park’s “Creature Comforts”) have screened here before; five of the 18 entries from nine countries are student works. “Dimensions of Dialogue” (Czechoslovakia) and S. Kushnevrov’s “The Tree” (Soviet Union) are being shown in truncated versions, and--to pick a nit--Svankmajer’s name is misspelled on the program.

Clay animator Nick Park dominates the show. Park won a British Academy Award for his “Grand Day Out” (Great Britain), a 23-minute film he began as a student and continued working on in his spare time for nearly a decade. An engaging, offbeat tale about a mild little man and his clever dog who decide to visit the moon to get some cheese for their teatime crackers, “Grand Day Out” contains some very clever and even charming moments. But Park seems to have lost track of the story line over the years, and the film stumbles to a weak conclusion.

A much more satisfying work is Park’s recent “Creature Comforts” (Great Britain), a parody of a TV news shows with an off-camera announcer interviewing the animals in a zoo. The humor in this delightful film comes from the subtly animated gestures and movements that bring the characters to life: A weary gorilla puffs her cheeks in a sigh before answering a question, while a nutty, lisping Brazilian panther gestures expansively with his forepaws.

Bruno Bozzetto and Ricardo Deuti offer a droll parody of the history of warfare in “Grass-hopper” (Italy). The simple drawing style and rapidly paced sight gags recall the “Seventh Slavonic Dance” sequence in “Allegro Non Troppo” and “Tapum: A History of Weapons,” Bozzetto’s first film. “Deadsy” by David Anderson, a strange multimedia collage made for Britain’s Channel 4, features a weird cut-out figure of death and live-action faces in Kabuki makeup. More than one viewing is needed to assimilate all the images in this very dense film, which seems a bit too self-consciously artsy for its own good.

Of the student works, Sheryl Sardina’s prize-winning “Eternity” (Canada), a miniature disaster film with a cleverly twisted ending, ranks as the most impressive. The others are too obviously the work of artists still in the earliest stages of their development, and they really don’t belong in a program with professional films.

The 1991 “Festival of Animation” continues at the State Theater through Feb. 14, and plays at the Campus Theater, Cal State Northridge, Feb. 8-19.