Short Stops: Harvie Krumpet
Genre: Animation, Comedy, Drama, Indie
We liked?
Not so much?
Harvie Krumpet is a charming story about the troubling life of a Tourette’s sufferer. It’s fast moving and an interesting watch. Well worth any movie seekers time.
This claymation, animated film was written, directed and animated all by the brilliant Adam Elliot. Harvie Krumpet is an uplifting short film that covers the life of Harvie, a tourette’s sufferer who faces all manner of tragedy in his life. Since this is a whole life covered in a 20 minute short film, it’s impossible to cover any portions with any great detail. It skips around to major events in his life, but none of it really feels rushed.
A major reason for that is the voice acting is pretty limited, and is instead narrated by the soothing voice of Geoffrey Rush. The writing for Harvie Krumpet is amusing, and makes for an easy watch as most of it is in a very conversational tone. This also means that it moves quickly along, and is able to both describe and show what is happening at the same time.
The claymation in Harvie Krumpet was terrifically done. Claymation has to be a painstaking ordeal – kind of like painting a house with one of those cheap, water color brushes from a Crayola painting set. Using narration instead of slowing down the pace of the movie with actual conversation probably was an enormous benefit.
Elliot has only one feature length film, Mary and Max, which was produced after Harvie Krumpet. There are certain scenes and story elements that are shared between both movies, but each has a very distinct plot and main story line. But in a way, if you’ve seen both, Harvie Krumpet does kind of feel like a trial run for Mary and Max.
Even if that was the case, Harvie Krumpet is a charming and lighthearted film that easily stands on its own legs. It’s one of the most entertaining short films I’ve seen in a while and doesn’t suffer from a feeling of being unsatisfying at its completion. If more people made short films like this, I think there would be far more people who would be fans of the genre. It’s difficult to tell a complete story in such a small time slot, but Elliot makes it look easy in this film. I also dare you to resist the charm of the “God is better than football” song.