Reviewing the 2025 Best Animated Short Film Nominees

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — The Oscars wrapped up on Sunday, but that doesn’t mean I’m fully done with my coverage! The same day I attended a screening of the five nominees for Best Live Action Short Film, I also went to the screening of the five nominees for Best Animated Short Film to see what our independent animators had to offer. Since I did a review of the live action shorts, it’s only fair for these animated shorts to receive the same attention.

When it comes to live action films, particularly shorts with minuscule budgets, you’re kind of getting the same thing each time. Yeah, the story and actors will be different, the way they’re shot will be different, but in a basic sense, you’re just seeing normal, flesh and blood people interacting with sets on camera. Not to mention that live action shorts films often tend to dive into serious and sometimes unpleasant subject matter that feel like they don’t have much room for levity.

Animation is a whole different world, though, allowing filmmakers to explore their concepts in ways that the real world won’t allow them to. Whether it’s stop-motion or minimalistic computer effects, the sky’s the limit, allowing basically anybody in the world to create their own movies, implementing animation styles we never really see from mainstream studios like Disney. These nominated animated shorts each have a distinct vibe all their own, showing how powerful and engaging stories can be told in many different ways.

Beautiful Men

Beautiful Men follows three brothers going through varying stages of baldness. They travel to Turkey to get hair transplants, but one of the brothers mistakenly schedules only one appointment, with no others available. Ashamed of his mistake, he must confess to his brothers, making all of them put their insecurities aside to figure out which of them deserves a full head of hair.

To kick off my reviews of the nominees up for the 2024 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, we have what was easily the weakest of the bunch for me. I love stop motion animation, but the overall aesthetic was hit and miss. It’s impeccably detailed and unique, but I found the design of the characters to be uncomfortable to look at. Weird looking characters aren’t inherently a bad thing and normally par for course for stop-motion animated films, but the realistic ways the characters were presented pushed into uncanny valley territory, like the main brother looked distractingly like Mark Zuckerberg.

The story was the other aspect that I didn’t fully connect with, although the somber, dry tone and awkward, yet natural, chemistry between the brothers was enjoyable. Writer-director Nicholas Keppens does manage to reach a conclusion with his short narrative, but it feels like significant character development is glossed over or straight up ignored. The ending wraps everything up with some humorous irony, but overall, I didn’t know what I was supposed to get out of this one beyond, “Just because you change on the outside doesn’t mean you change on the inside.”

My rating: 5.5/10

In the Shadow of the Cypress

In the Shadow of the Cypress tells the story of an old man and his adult daughter living by themselves near the sea. A traumatic event in the old man’s past continues to haunt him, putting himself and his daughter at an increasing emotional distance. When a whale ends up beaching itself near their home, the daughter attempts to save it, desperately trying to get her reluctant father to help.

This is the one that just won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film and it was a deserving win, as it’s a beautiful short that tells a compelling and relatable story about PTSD and how it destroys everything around you. There’s no dialogue, but writing-directing team Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani convey everything you need to know through the striking visuals. The animation style is stunning in its simplicity, employing a unique look to the characters that’s both endearingly cartoonish and realistically human.

While this wasn’t my favorite of these five nominees, as it’s a bit repetitive and could have gotten the point across more succinctly, I can definitely see why it won the Oscar. Like Best Animated Feature Film Oscar winner Flow, it completely lacks dialogue, telling its story 100% through the visuals. Because of that, it’s able to transcend language barriers, while at the same time telling a universal, human story that transcends cultural boundaries. There may be only two characters in the film (three, if you count the whale), but I’m sure every single person on the planet would be able to connect with one or the other.

My rating: 8.5/10

Magic Candies

Dong-Dong (Haruto Shima) is a young boy living in Japan who much prefers playing with himself rather than other kids. One day, he comes across Magic Candies at the store, each piece he eats giving him the ability to communicate with things or people normally wouldn’t be able to: his couch, his dog, his deceased grandmother; you name it! Through these various magical conversations, Dong-Dong gains new perspectives on life and what makes it worth living.

Based on the children’s book by Heena Baek his was a delightful and charming little film, one with a great premise that director Daisuke Nishio and screenwriter Ichiro Takano skillfully execute within its short timeframe. It starts off quite silly where these candies allow Dong-Dong to speak to his couch or dog. As you’d expect, his conversation with his couch is pretty superficial (it complaining about the remote stuck between its cushions), but speaking to his dog, hearing his father’s thoughts, or communicating with his grandma up in the heavens gives him entirely new perspectives on life.

Magic Candies is computer animated but has a stop-motion aesthetic to it with how the characters and settings are realized. The characters definitely look odd, but unlike Beautiful Men, their offbeat charm is far easier on the eyes and fits this movie’s tone better. Dong-Dong is a cute little protagonist, so it was fun to watch him progress as a character and witness the bizarre effects of these magic candies through his eyes. Just like the best candy, this is sweet, fun, and the flavor lasts just long enough to keep you satisfied and happy.

My rating: 8.5/10

Wander to Wonder

Living deep in the woods, Uncle Gilly (Neil Salvage) produces his own children’s TV show Wander to Wonder. The show stars tiny humans Mary (Amanda Lawrence), Billybud (Terrence Dunn), and Fumbleton (Toby Jones), with each episode teaching lessons one would typically find in these shows for children. When Uncle Gilly suddenly passes away, the three stars of the show are left stranded in his home, slowly losing their sanity as food and supplies in the house dwindle.

Wander to Wonder was easily the most “out there” film of all these. It’s weird, somewhat uncomfortable, and a little bit freaky, which are all reasons why it was my favorite. The best way to describe this is that it’s similar to a short film or show Adult Swim would randomly play at 1 a.m. The vibe feels vintage and homemade, like some twisted twin of Mr. Rogers is living off the grid and making… well, this. It’s all funny because of this unique idea and the quirky characters, but there’s this melancholy darkness that runs through it all.

It’s a wonderful premise, too. What would happen if the creator of a children’s show passed away and his creations were forced to survive without him? It allows the human condition to be explored through a different type of lens, with each character experiencing varying types of grief. Even if these stop-motion characters are somewhat off-putting, the great vocal performances from the cast imbue them with sympathy. Neil Salvage, whose role is live action, embodies the warm charisma of a childhood TV host, but you can tell something is off about him.

I loved it all so much that the only problem was that it’s too short! Wander to Wonder took 8 years to make, yet it’s only 14 minutes long (that’s stop-motion filmmaking, for you), and when the narrative really starts getting going, it’s over! The ending to this feels more like the end of a first act, where I was really wanting more to see what other shenanigans these characters would get into. I guess I just instantly fell in love with what director Nina Gantz and her team of co-writers were doing that if she wanted to extend this project into a feature length film, you wouldn’t see me complaining. I’m ready to wander into more wonder!

My rating: 9.5/10

Yuck!

While spending summer at a campground, young boy Léo (Noé Chabbat) develops a huge crush on his friend Lucie (Katell Varvat). Lucie has the same feelings and when the two decide to secretly kiss, they’re caught by their friends who end up teasing them because, “Yuck! Kissing is so gross and only for grown-ups!” Léo and Lucie are embarrassed by the situation, but come to realize that everybody feels affection in one way or another.

Yuck! is the shortest and most straightforward of these five nominees, telling a sweet little story about young love helping kids mature and express their true feelings. It’s a universal story that many can relate to, with the way the characters here reacting the exact same way we might have when we were their age. As a little kid, we all think kissing is totally grody, especially when our parents do it, but it’s only a matter of time before we have that first crush and suddenly kissing doesn’t seem all that bad anymore.

The way writer-director Loïc Espuche animated the characters to show they’re displaying attraction by their lips growing hot pink was a neat little touch, which led to a cool shot of all the camping tents glowing pink in the middle of the night. Besides that, though, the 2D animation is nothing special, with the way the characters are designed teetering into ugly territory. It’s the nostalgic element of the story that really makes it work overall, reminding us that being a child maybe wasn’t as easy and simple as we remember, yet we still miss those days.