Luna wears moon boots and decorates her room with stars and spaceships. Andrew Chesworth and Bobby PontillasĮvery little kid dreams of going to space one day, but not as fiercely as Luna Chu, the young girl around whom “One Small Step” revolves. The audience remembers, perhaps with a jolt of discomfort, that they were in the animal kingdom all along.ĭir. This hilarious twist, though a bit heavy-handed, packs a startling punch.
The film climaxes in a literal dogfight, as a conventional shrink’s office becomes the animal kingdom writ small.
A group of Vancouver-based actors turns in fantastic voice performances - Ryan Beil as the mostly calm, canine psychotherapist is a standout. But of course, only “Animal Behaviour” has a talking praying mantis. Notably, the short relies heavily on an actual script to advance its concept and develop its characters none of the other entries in this category come close to this level of hyperactive dialogue, and many have no dialogue at all. Snowden and Fine utilize a muted, familiar animation style, one that evokes the Nickelodeon comics of yesteryear, which adds to the scenes a harsh realism that juxtaposes wonderfully with the antics unfolding on screen. The animal stand-ins for human behavior certainly aren’t subtle, but are delightful nonetheless. Lorraine the leech has attachment issues, Victor the ape can’t manage his anger, and Jeffrey the bird has nightmares of pushing his little brother out of the nest to his death. “Animal Behaviour” takes the absurdities of modern human behavior and manifests them in their logical extremes, as character traits of various animals that gather together for a group therapy session. “You need to stop gazing at your own navels and just get on with your lives,” an ape says to a text-savvy praying mantis, a boy-crazy leech, a dog with a psychology degree, a bird with a traumatic past and a pig, among other animals. "Animal Behavior" (2018) is an animated, Oscar-nominated short film directed by David Fine and Alison Snowden.