This is a cute little CGI short. A character that looks something like Yoshi from the Super Mario Brothers series of Nintendo games is a down-and-out janitor at a nightclub where he dreams one day of singing on stage--except that he's a terrible singer and clumsy at that. After a short series of misadventures he hears that the Chubbchubbs are coming and tries to warn the crowd, only to find more misadventures. Finally, he sees himself protecting a group of cute, fuzzy little creatures while face-to-face with giant, glowering warriors... and a final twist gives him everything he ever wanted.
As for it's Academy Award, I'm rather uncertain why this one stuck out over the much stronger Das Rad (for CGI work) and infinitely more compelling Atama Yama (for hand-drawn animation). But that's the nature of the Academy, really--seldom do they choose something that is really qualitative, and there's always a bias in there.
Anyway, this is a fun short, but easily forgettable and doesn't offer anything really new to the underdog narrative or CGI animation.
--PolarisDiB
As for it's Academy Award, I'm rather uncertain why this one stuck out over the much stronger Das Rad (for CGI work) and infinitely more compelling Atama Yama (for hand-drawn animation). But that's the nature of the Academy, really--seldom do they choose something that is really qualitative, and there's always a bias in there.
Anyway, this is a fun short, but easily forgettable and doesn't offer anything really new to the underdog narrative or CGI animation.
--PolarisDiB