Protraph Lack of good storyline.

ChicDragon It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

dreyerda A collection of nineteen animated films. `Das Rad' is the story of the rise and fall of the human civilization as witnessed by two rocks. At the end conditions return to how they were before man and the human existence is seen as only one part of the cycle of the world. `Parking' is about a man who has a pristine parking lot ready to open when he discovers a weed. In his battle with the weed the parking lot is never opened. The moral of the story: keep the big picture in mind and don't get consumed by the details. Another, which is a look into the afterlife, depicts the torture of an inescapable eternity. A soldier who finds himself in heaven tries to kill himself, which takes him to purgatory, again tries to kill himself and ends up in hell where he is out of bullets. Last of my favorites was a Japanese cartoon in which a man who saves everything he finds grows a tree out of his head. People begin to live there. When he gets angry at their excesses he tears the trees from its roots creating a hole. But the hole gathers water and people still congregate. In the end the man, who is the symbolic conservationist, dies from the excesses of the people leading to the ultimate demise of nature. Some of the comedy pieces I didn't think were very funny but overall I would recommend seeing this for the above-mentioned films.

Ronin47 A collection of 19 animated shorts from all over the world assembled by animators Don Hertzfeldt and Mike Judge (the creator of "Beavis and Butthead"), "The Animation Show" is an absolute blast, easily the most fun I've had in a theater thus far in 2004. They range from silly to deadly serious, and pretty much every style of animation is represented here, from stick figures to stunningly beautiful CGI. Here are my favorites (in the order they were presented). Excerpt from "Mars And Beyond" - This trippy 1957 work from the late, legendary animator Walt Kimball is a spooky and fascinating tour of what scientists thought Mars might look like at the time, including many bizarre hypothetical life forms. "Ident" - an alternately funny and unsettling claymation film about...well, I THINK it's about all the different masks we have to wear in society, the way we're constantly molding our identity to fit those around us. "The Cathedral" - A creepy and eye-popping, beautiful CG film about an explorer who ventures into a large and strange alien structure and finds that he shouldn't have. "Vincent" - I hadn't seen this funny and slightly disturbing 1982 Tim Burton claymation short (about an imaginatively morbid 7 year-old) since I was a little kid, and I remember being extremely creeped out by it. Hasn't changed. "Rejected" - By far the funniest of the group, this is a collection of surreal and frequently disgusting commercials that Don Hertzfeldt submitted to the Family Learning Channel and various corporations that were rejected. All of them are absolutely hysterical. "Das Rad" - Probably my overall favorite, this is a stunning and surprisingly powerful short, about the entire rise and fall of human civilization, as witnessed by two unchanged rocks. "Welcome To The Show", "Intermission In The Third Dimension" and "The End Of The Show" - These Hertzfeldt shorts that come in the beginning, middle and end of the collection, feature 2 talking cotton balls that Hertzfeldt loves to torture (kind of like all the figures in his drawings) - they are great. There were only 3 that I didn't care for: "Strange Invaders", "The Adventures Of Ricardo" and Bill Plympton's "Parking", with "...Ricardo" being the definite low point. Those aside, it's a fantastic roller-coaster ride of an experience.

almondbrot -- Light spoilers ahead --This is a collection of original and entertaining animation shorts, which I recommend for viewing without any reservations. There are very few parts which do not live up to the overall standard, and only while watching "Cathedral" I was longing for a fast-forward button. Highlights are the shorts by Don Hertzfeldt, especially the "Rejected" part, where he pretends to show his rejected commercial attempts for advertising the Family Learning Channel and some stupid consumer products. This is hilarious and over-the-top humor, sprinkled with gratuitous violence and cruelty (sometimes maybe a bit too much), very enjoyable. There is also a beautiful French short with music by Berlioz and drawings which look like impressionist paintings morphing into one another, though with a very dark and depressing mood to it. Then there is the Japanese flick about a man growing a cherry tree on his head, a German short about very slowly living stone people watching human civilization inventing the wheel, growing and finally destroying itself. There are beautiful and funny "short shorts" by Mike Judge, clay animation in "Ident", a great piece by Tim Burton on a boy identifying himself with Vincent Price (narrated by Vincent Price himself, all in verse), too much to be told here. Go and watch it, you won't regret it.

Valeyard-2 In a year of regurgitated ideas and mindless sequels, The Animation Show proves that there are still value left in the art of moving pictures. Don Hertzfeldt's simple yet excruciatingly genius segments hurdle you through a gaggle of shorts produced with love and thought. I was a bit surprised to see Mike Judge's contributions were small, but they are still welcome.The excerpt from Ward Kimball's "Mars and Beyond" animated film proves how the Disney company could once produce, in just a few minutes, something that contained more ingenuity than an entire 2 hour animated Disney film today. I still haven't mentioned the thought provoking shorts Mt. Head or Ident. And I'm sure this doesn't give justice to some of the other animated segments that deserve credit in this wonderful anthology.I beg of you all to see this collection while it is still in theaters so we may be blessed with a second volume come next year. Enjoy it while you can!