Grandpa Walrus (2017) User Reviews

I love it

[Kirpianuscus · 25 December 2018]

It is only a short film about states of soul. A family, real eccentric at the first sigh on a beach. The axis - the death of the granfather and his funerals. A serie of unhappy experiences for each member of family. And the moment of cry together, as a sort of connection between its members. The good point - the realistic reflection of the characters traits, the spirit of grandfather front to Lucas, the traits of Nippon animation - model for decent - nice drawings. The bad point - maybe the desire to reflect an ordinary family, with absent father, only at the level of emotions, reactions, games of the states. Not real a story. Only a sort of post-modern poem in images. I admitt, I love it. Maybe, for Lucas, especcialy.

Overall it stayed unimpressive to me

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 25 December 2018]

"Pépé le morse" or "Grandpa Walrus", the third work by young stunning French filmmaker Lucrèce Andreae, is an animated short film that premiered back in 2017 already, but may need until 2019 to really peak with its popularity as this 15-minute movie is on the short list of potential Oscar nominees for the Best Animated Short category. That fact sure made me a bit curious here. Well, let's get right into it. The film is set at the French coast where windy bad weather is dominant and we watch a family walk along the shore as they are visiting the place where their recently-deceased husband/father/grandfather preferred to spend most of his time, namely by lying in the sand chainsmoking and enjoying the sun on his skin during times of better weather. These times are over as the current weather implies. The man is dead. But he returns in some way as a force of nature that does not necessarily feel like a kindred spirit. His grandson perceives him as a hybrid between walrus and human, another family member has a bad experience with harmless plants gone rogue and then there is also a water bubble creature. The first I mentioned happens to the boy who is slightly more in the center of the story than everybody else and probably it also refers to the walrus/grandpa reference in the film's title. The crying scene at the end almost was probably the best aspect of this quarter of an hour, but this alone did not make up for basically everything else for me. The animation isn't bad, actually pretty decent, even if I am not sure American awards bodies will appreciate the style. I personally did not like it as much as I hoped I would which is of course entirely subjective, but also has to do with my relatively low rating here. Eventually neither animation nor story made enough of an impression for me to call this a memorable watch, not even to recommend it in fact. It's probably a film for grown-ups. Another thing I did not like too much was the quick change from sadness to joy almost towards the end, which felt rushed to me. And honestly the way everybody was behaving towards each other for almost the entire movie I struggled to believe they would go on this trip together after all. Them bonding again near the end did not make it convincing enough just like the urinating joke. So a thumbs-down from me and I personally don't want to see the film nominated for an Oscar. I have far from seen all of the other contenders in this category, but I would be hugely surprised if I did not find 5 among them I like more. By the way, is this what happened to the fella from Tusk?