SXSW Film Reviews

COMEDIA SHORTS

D: various

Film festivals are often a very serious business, filled with serious people discussing serious films about serious issues. While there's nothing wrong with that, sometimes we all need a break from pensiveness. Enter Comedia Shorts, a collection of international shorts from the film arm of the Montreal Comedy Festival, which touts itself as being "Just for Laughs." "Harvie Krumpet," an Australian claymation narrated by Geoffrey Rush, opens the collection with the kind of splendidly good-natured schadenfreude of which only Commonwealthers are capable. Combining the cutesy aesthetics of Wallace and Gromit with the dystopian drab of The Triplets of Belleville, the short chronicles the life of a man with Tourette's who moves from Poland to Australia during WWII, becomes

magnetized, loses a testicle, becomes sterile, adopts a thalidomide baby, gets Alzheimer's, and a number of other things that really wouldn't amuse us if Rush weren't such a good narrator and Adam Elliot such a good animator. Other films include "7h35 Dc Matin," a sketch that considers what would happen if, as in musicals, entire coffee shops burst into song; "Guard Dog," an animation about a dog who sees imminent danger around every corner; "Merci," a fantastically simple Belgian short filmed on the subway; and "Non-Fat," a surprise that avenges all former and current coffee-shop employees in under two minutes.

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Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, 4:30pm