Review: 'Shorts'
Plot: A weird Texas suburb gets weirder when the local kids find a magical rock. Three stars. Rated PG.
Bottom line: A wonderfully weird kids' film with enough smarts for parents.
Cast: Leslie Mann, Jon Cryer, William H. Macy, James Spader
Length: 1:29
In 'Shorts,' Texas kids get their world rocked
Photo credit: Warner Bros. | From left, Rebel Rodriguez, Leo Howard, and Trevor Gagnon in a scene from "Shorts."
Slipped into Robert Rodriguez's smart, funny, fast-as-lightning kids' movie, "Shorts," are several sly comments on American culture and the tyranny of technology. Some take a moment to process. Others, however, are as delightfully obvious as the booger jokes.
The premise is gleefully surreal: In the Texas suburb of Black Falls, the techno-mogul Carbon Black (James Spader) is conquering the world with his Black Box. This marvelous but disturbingly ubiquitous gadget is a cell phone, MP3 player, cheese grater, nose-hair trimmer and - well, it's everything.
But it's not perfect. "It has too many features," says one youngster, "and the batteries last only a few minutes."
Remind you of anything? Rodriguez almost risks copyright infringement with this evil iPod, though it's also a stand-in for all attention-sucking circuitry. When little Loogie (Trevor Gagnon) begs his brothers to do something besides play video games, one replies, "We've been over this before. There's nothing else to do."
The story begins when lonely Toe Thompson (Jimmy Bennett) discovers a magic rock that grants its holder any wish. As the rock bounces into the hands of everyone from Toe's hapless parents (Leslie Mann and Jon Cryer) to a bully named Helvetica (Jolie Vanier, in an excellent debut), everyone learns a lesson or two about the unperfectable nature of life.
The film's title refers partly to its still-growing protagonists, but also to its structure of brief, stand-alone episodes. The common thread is that rock, an item that creates more problems than it solves. You probably own something just like it.
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