“Maski Papano” is a short film that tells the story of… well, us, particularly at the time of COVID-19. From the perspective of an inanimate object (i.e. a face mask) that, well, came to life a la Forky (from Toy Story 4).
Is this film by Che and Glenn any good?
PROS
- A refreshing “take” – e.g. a character like Forky to represent us all.
- It’s short. Meaning, even if you’re starting to feel like, WTF am I watching?, the five minutes is already over.
CONS
- This is… low budget – e.g. the stop-motion animation is basic, at best; and the very character (the animated mask) is not immediately identifiable, is emotion-less, etc. This isn’t helped by the use of the wooden anatomical figures used by artists as the “base” of the “livings masks”, so that you actually basically end up with dolls dressed up in disposable masks.
- Voice-dependent, which means if a VO slips up, the storytelling does, too.
- Too “clean”, considering the use of thrown-away face masks (from piles of garbage). Even the dump sites in Toy Story 3 or Wall-E looked dirtier than this.
- Eventually… shallow, when it could have tackled any of the issues it raised at least more extensively than it should, e.g. closed facilities, coping mechanisms, that we’re in this together, etc.
IN THE END
As soon as the stop-motion animation started, I was reminded of “Graffiti”, released in 2010 by TBWA PARIS as an anti-AIDS PSA.
Too bad, for me, that it didn’t turn out even close to “Graffiti”.
This is more of a pet project. Something submitted “maski papano” for the sake of submitting something. That’s not necessarily a good thing; but then again… it only lasts for five minutes, so…
“Maski Papano” is part of the 17th edition of Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival, running until September 5 ktx.ph (https://www.ktx.ph/).
