Shorts
Robert Rodriguez’s Shorts fails to cater to today’s young minds that are far more matured than the director. The movie can be listed under the most immature of works produced by Rodriguez. After making action flicks including ‘Sin City’ and the ‘Spy Kids,’ Rodriguez has come up with this Shorts that almost challenges the intellect of the audience and this challenge or underestimation will prove quite a lot for the director.
Rodriguez has mistaken if he thought that some colorful rock, which fulfils the wishes of the owner is a very brain tickling storyline he is absolutely wrong. Just imagine kids who have watched films such as E.T or The Iron Giant will certainly give a damn to this film. Let us face the fact, the younger audience is much more smarter and intelligent to accept something as silly as this movie. And it is quite a tragedy that for long we have not seen a good children’s film.
Rodriguez is known for his family adventure films but Shorts is not up to the mark. The story is about Toe Thompson an 11-year-old kid who narrates the story from his memory. Toe is a target of the bullies in the suburb community of Black Falls.
Toe’s parents work for the Black Box Industries and his brothers Loogie, Lug and Laser discover a colorful rock during a storm. The movie revolves round this colorful rock and the person who possesses it can make all his/her wishes come true. And next is everyone’s guess the colorful rock is misused as it passes from one kid to another causing a great havoc in the town. Soon you see all of Black Falls on a wild rampage.
William H. Macy, Kat Dennings, Trevor Gagnon, Jimmy Bennett, Jake Short in Shorts
It is really sad to say that Rodriguez even fails to use the special effects for the up gradation of the film. After a point it really gets annoying for the viewer. The movie reaches a level when the audience fail to understand what is happening in the film; there is so much chaos and confusion, Anyways, the director seems to have not bothered much about what the audience feel or thinks.
It looks like he has made this movie just to make his five children happy. Toe’s narration of events goes awry; there is no logical continuation, everything seems to be haphazard. Rodriguez might have taken great pleasure to make this film as he has revealed that his kids inspired the story, which has turned out to be against the audience choice.
But we have to give credit to the multi-faceted director for writing, directing, co-editing, cinematography and also for composing the music of the film. Now we know the reason for this disappointing film, he could not concentrate on one thing and as a result Shorts.
There is another bit of information, it seems his son Rebel suggested the title of the movie and he reasoned it out with this- the story is short, the kids in the film are short and all of them wear shorts!! Well, that is a cute thought but his father should have shown some maturity in making a better film.
| Film | Shorts |
|---|---|
| Cast | Jimmy Bennett as Toe Thompson Jake Short as Nose Noseworthy Kat Dennings as Stacey Thompson Trevor Gagnon as Loogie Devon Gearhart as Cole Black Jolie Vanier as Helvetica Black Rebel Rodriguez as Lug Leo Howard as Laser Leslie Mann as Mom Thompson |
| Director | Robert Rodriguez |
| Screen Writers | Robert Rodriguez, Álvaro Rodríguez |
| Producers | Robert Rodriguez, Elizabeth Avellan |
| Runtime | 1 Hour 30 Minutes |
| Rating | 2/5 |
Posted on Saturday, September 5th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
September 5th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
To begin let me make you angry by telling you: your use of the English language is terrible. A reviewer should know English grammer and be able to use it correctly. Next, do you have young children? This movie never claimed to appeal to teenagers or adults. It is a kid’s movie! You probably do not remember “The Little Rascals,” but some of us loved them as kids. The movie was sort of a “take-off” on “The Little Rascals.” I think that most of the reviewers are angry that Robert Rodriguez is not doing more of the “Sin City” type of movies. Some of us do not like bloody movies! Perhaps your children are “too mature” to enjoy “Shorts,” but not all of our children are that mature. I certainly hope that there are still some young children that don’t require “G. I. Joe” and “Inglorious Bastards” as their entertainment. My hat is off to Mr. Rodriguez for trying to make a movie without cuss words, sex or extreme violence. I hope that children can still be children and not little adults. Maybe the adults do not want to take the young children to see this movie after reading reviews such as yours! Don’t make the children have to grow up sooner than they should.