BlinkyTM

A boy decides he wants a robot companion like the friendly, smiling Blinky™ that he sees on the TV adverts. His parents oblige and he finds himself with a great friend and servant who never tires and always does what he is told. However, while the boy has this friend he has to see his parent's relationship deteriorate in front of him.

This short film has a nice air in brooding tension and it builds it pretty well across the film. The main selling point is of course in the area of the visual effects because for a short film these are very well done. Blinky looks convincingly real for the majority of the time, but he also has a nice sense of menace in the way that all dead-eyed staring and smiling things do; he feels wrong even when he is so clearly just a loyal robotic dog of a thing. So on this level it works but the problem is that the narrative moves us too quickly and the further it goes the more blatant it gets. This is seen very quickly as the brooding menace becomes almost comic excess, whether it be the melodramatics of the boy yelling at the robot or final shots. This disappointed me a bit because it felt like the leaps were too big and undercut the nice build up it had mostly done.

It does still work for what it is and the visual effects are well worth a look, but at times it appeared much smarter and more subtle that it ultimately turned out to be, and it was hard not to feel like the journey was better than the destination.