User Reviews

"A Joy Story: Joy and Heron" is a new animated short film that has attracted many viewers on Youtube since its release in december. Apparently, this is a Chinese production, but the producers and directors (really many for a film under 5 minutes) don't sound too Chinese to me. And there is also no spoken language in here and you don't need to be able to understand English despite imdb telling you so. What else can I say about this one. It's a simple story and the running time is appropriate for the subject. A fisherman is on his boat and he has his dog with him. The dog runs into a stork and initially the two seem like antagonists, but when they baby storks come into play and the dog sees them, then things change quickly and the result is a friendship that both animal characters profit from considerably. The fish and worms not so much though. Cute little tale. The animation is good and it surprised me a bit to see that this was made by people working as visual effects artists on Spike Jonze's "Her", but good for them I guess. We will see if the film here has a shot at getting in at the Oscars. I like the animation in terms of landscapes, settings and the sea and also the attention to detail, but I felt honestly the animal characters could have looked a bit better. I don't need a great deal of cuteness to be honest (young storks aren't supposed to be cute anyway), but I wanted something more in that department. But maybe it's just me and my subjective taste here. All in all, a thumbs-up, really good watch for everybody who likes or even loves animation. Go check it out.