In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

A fun children's animated movie, and certainly not too long. The story seemed familiar in some way, but of the Gruffalo I never heard before. They didn't mean Mark Ruffalo meeting the Grinch, right?The animation style is charming, the characters work pretty good and the story unfolds cleverly, with distinct attention to many details. The ending had escaped me for a while, but I was able to look it up.A great introduction to the many monsters of cinema for children, should they be interested. One nephew couldn't get enough of this. Me neither, really.8 out of 10.

A well made recreation of the book, very well animated, great style, well expressed. But the moral of the story, is that dishonesty is the best approach to survival.Frankly, considering it's aimed at children of a highly susceptible age to such influences, the fact that this is well made horrifies me.The author's intent was to create a children's book without purpose, at least I hope, but the result is something incredibly damaging to our society.If you're going to censor what your children watch, I could name a hundred movies full of hardcore blood and violence that would give them a far better moral education.Hell, Watership Down may have been brutal and had me cowering behind the sofa once a week in my years as a toddler, but at least it had integrity, and a point other than existing.I'll give it a 5. 10 for quality, 1 for purpose/story.

This short film based on the popular children's book was something I was really annoyed to miss when it was broadcast at Christmas, but when it was shown again I wasn't going to miss it again. Basically two Little Squirrels (Sam Lewis and Phoebe Givron-Taylor) are being told the story of a mouse's walk through the woods by Mother Squirrel (Helena Bonham Carter). A Mouse (James Corden) goes for a walk in the forest in order to get to the tree of acorns, and along the way he encounters predators who will want to eat him. He encounters a Fox (Tom Wilkinson), an Owl (John Hurt) and a Snake (Rob Brydon) who all invite him for a meal, the Mouse declines all of them as he knows they want to eat him. After declining he says to each enemy that he is meeting something called the Gruffalo (Robbie Coltrane), which he describes the hideous anatomy of, and he says its favourite food is based on his predator, to which they run away. The Mouse laughs to himself, knowing that there is no such thing as a Gruffalo, however he is shocked to see that the creature he has been inventing actually exists, and he wants to eat him. However the Mouse stops him, claiming that he is the scariest animal in the forest, and the Gruffalo thinking this is a joke agrees to follow him so he can prove it. The Mouse approaches each predator again, and they run away in terror seeing the big monster behind him, the Gruffalo assumes wrongly that they are running from the Mouse. After all this and the Gruffalo believes that he is indeed the scariest animal in the forest, the Mouse threatens to eat him, to which the large creature runs away, and the Mouse walks away nibbling an acorn he finds. The computer animation is really good for this simple and fun story, the younger audience will definitely have fun with the lovable Mouse, the hideous but likable Gruffalo, and the other characters as well, and the older audience will like the well known voices bringing them to life, is an easy to enjoy family fantasy. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Short Animated Film, and it was nominated the BAFTA for Best Short Animation. Very good!

I enjoyed this short film quite a bit, though of all the films nominated for Best Animated Short this year, I think it and "Let's Pollute" have the least chance of winning the Oscar. We'll see--the winner is to be announced next week.The film is odd because it's is a story within a story. It begins with a mother squirrel (Helena Bonham Carter...who, incidentally, doesn't seem that squirrelly to me) almost being caught by a bird of prey. She scrambles into her nest and tells her children a story about a mouse and when he was captured by predators--and how the clever mouse escapes.The film is extremely cute and enjoyable. However, the character animation seemed only fair--and compared to many other CGI films of the last few years it does not compare well. This does not detract horribly from enjoying the film and the film's backgrounds are quite nice. All in all, I have no other negatives about it other than the character design and I am sure young kids will love it.UPDATE: I was surprised, but just moments ago I saw that "The Lost Thing" won the Oscar for Best Animated Short. To me, this was a surprise!