Knick Knack (1992)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Not even bad in a good way

A Brilliant Conflict

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

In an alternative universe where toys are alive, a snowman dreams about joining the summer party taking place next to him, while it is trapped inside a snowball. The main and almost only motivation after this snowman to get out the snowball and approach the other toys partying is the presence of a skin and wavy blonde doll, with a huge and impressive sunglasses and a brilliant smile which helps her to fit in the perfect and standardized canon of a woman nowadays everyone should desire to be or to date. The short film deals with this subject in a humoristic way, showing the snowman going through different situations in order to finally meet this doll and be with her. But for what concerns me, the jokes are far from being funny or original, the story is simple and quite predictable, what in addition to the motivation under the plot made me unable to enjoy the film. The good part of the short film might be the good animation Pixar Studios never fails to show, the colors and the sound which make the piece audio visually attractive, thus even when there is no dialogue we are able to follow everything that is going on and read the expressions and feelings of the toys on screen when they are not even human nor real.

Knick Knack is a short film about toys. A snowman which is inside a snow dome wants to get out there and have some fun. It's quite a funny film, but there is some serious side. Seeing other toys hanging out from inside the dome, the snowman wants to join them. And girl doll invites him to join them. He is really glad to be invited and tries to get out of the snow dome somehow. His efforts are kind of funny, but those show us how desperate for communication he is. He is captured in the dome and can't touch other toys. I can't laugh at him simply. His loneliness is the motivation for his actions.At last he can get out of the dome for a moment and meets a mermaid doll. When he takes a step to her, the dome falls onto him and he gets stuck in the dome again. His interactions are prevented by the dome again. Maybe the same things like this happen in our lives. The difference is just whether we can see the dome or not.

This film will satisfy everyone even if anyone watches it because a lot of complications and resolutions appear. They hooked me. A snowman challenges in some ways to escape from his dome, and when he is focused on, it seems that he does grand actions. For example, he uses a drill, a hammer and dynamite. However, it is funny to see his actions from human's eyes because a tiny toy merely tries various means in the small toy's world. This switch of the angle in camera is amazing to me. Moreover his efforts do not succeed and fail in breaking out the dome again and again. His failures were shown cleverly so that I admired it. I thought that it was surprising that this movie was a kinf of Pixar films, but this story was not happy end. I have an idea that Pixar films would do well eventually, but this is not like that. I was mocked by it in good meaning.

This movie is a very simple and short story. The main character is a snowman. He is trapped inside a circle snow dome. So, he attempts to escape from this snow dome by using a variety of toys and to talk to beautiful doll outside of this snow dome. After all, the snowman can escape from this snow dome for a short time and encounter this doll. However, he backs to this snow dome. I think this film is so funny and easy to understand. Background music is also very comical. So, I strongly recommend this movie for everyone.