Movies

The ‘Futurama’-esque Space Delivery Absurdity of ‘JohnnyExpress’

johnny express
By  · Published on December 22nd, 2017

Just when you thought Fry had a monopoly on sci-fi laziness.

The wonders of space travel and the limitlessness of the universe will make tracking packages even more frustrating than it is now. That’s the premise behind JohnnyExpress, a short film from Kyungmin Woo.

The animation, created through Alfred Imageworks, is rubbery yet static, like a softer claymation. Its bright colors and varied styles echo the space adventure’s imaginative breadth, but also mask the dark humor throughout the film. This is no Pixar short; this is brutal.

The differences in scale, size, and culture between alien planets creates plenty of silent, classical storytelling, but the film’s decision to make its tale as cautionary and worst-case as possible make it delightfully cruel. Couple that with the childlike primary colors and round edges of its characters, and you have something that looks like a kid’s cartoon and kicks like a bull. What’s not to like about sci-fi like that?

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Jacob Oller writes everywhere (Vanity Fair, The Guardian, Playboy, FSR, Paste, etc.) about everything that matters (film, TV, video games, memes, life).