User Reviews

This film was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short. There will be mild spoilers here:

It will take me longer to write this review than it took me to watch this short, which is roughly three minutes long. It's a cute, funny, clever and wicked short. It's like whipped cream on a dessert-tasty and light.

The plot is that a young woman gets a 45 with a song on it. She puts it on her record player and accidentally discovers that the grooves on the record correspond to points on her lifeline.

Unaware or unmindful of the admonition that it may be well for you to leave well enough alone when you know not the consequences of your actions (if you don't know what it does, don't mess with it) she starts playing with this, moving the needle around on the grooves and moves all up and down on the time-line of her life.

It's done very cleverly and the ending is rather apt, I suppose. I'm not surprised by the nomination and I don't really have a problem with it in general, except that it was a very strong year for short animation, with a couple of shorts I feel are stronger than this and another of the nominees. Still, I'm glad they got recognition and I wish them luck.

This short is available for download online and is well worth watching. Recommended.

One does have to wonder what kind of criteria the Academy follows at the moment of choosing the nominees for the category of Best Animated Short Film.

More often than not, the choices feel absolutely random, sometimes picking rather forgetable titles while much more impressive, daring works tend to be completely snubbed.

I simply can't tell why this short was even nominated. I won't say it's bad (It isn't), but neither the plot and visuals are particularly remarkable in any way or another.

The premise had a lot of potential, but not much is done with it.

At least it goes directly to the point, without any unnecessary buildup.

It was okay, but could have been more.

The song was nice.

"A Single Life" is a 2.5-minute animated short film from 2 years ago that managed an Academy Award nomination. It was co-written and directed by Joris Oprins and it is a Dutch production. However, you don't have to worry about not understanding the dialog in this very short film as there isn't any. The only words are English and come from a record that the main and only character keeps playing. This record is some sort of a time machine for her. Unfortunately I must say that I was neither impressed by the animation nor by the contents of this little movie. The story is very repetitive and the new shades added throughout the film hardly offer anything new in terms of drama or comedy. Baffled to see this one really receive an Academy Award nomination. Not worth the watch. Thumbs down and I cannot say that it got me curious about Oprins' other works. i hope he can step things up in the next years and this film was not already his biggest achievement.