The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

A year ago, this short was on Itunes and unavailable to watch in the UK for the nominal fee you could in the states. Now it is available to view for free on Youtube at:

http://youtu.be/Adzywe9xeIU

Or if you prefer Vimeo, here:

http://vimeo.com/channels/frostclick

It's nice and it's solid. But it didn't take me with it. It might be a case of having watched it early in the morning. I don't know. However, i'll raise a few points that came to me.

Having been carried to a new world, the level of curiosity of Morris Lessmore is fairly minimal. He appears to be content with simply strolling through taking each bit as it comes, without ever really testing or pushing the boundaries of his new environment. I get the metaphors, the whole process of being absorbed by a book, and the book becoming a personality and very much something you take care of (and through that building another story). I sure as hell have an emotional attachment to mine. If you hate all books of any kind you won't get this (and why would you be reading this anyway?)

So with regard to the book character, we'll call him Humpty, i didn't feel he carried Mr Lessmore through any emotional journey - although he had tried, i feel the writers hadn't pushed it enough. When Mr Lessmore sees the girl, flying away with the books, he has a slight curiosity, and then Humpty comes along and takes him to the house, where Lessmore just goes with the flow. For me this is where the sense of discovery should of been pushed, his quest to discover who the girl is, how he can find her. There was no indication that he had discovered he was there to replace her, and therefor the realisation he'd been there too replace her. We can also rule out Humpty here for revealing this information as his anthropomorphic qualities consisted to motion and very basic emotion indicators.

So for me, its solid, great animation, great visuals and design. However, I feel the journeys representation could have been pushed. But maybe all this is personal taste? However, it has won awards, so what do i know?