Room on the Broom

Compared to the hype that the animated adaptations of Julia Donaldson's books The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo's Child got, this year's film Room on the Broom seemed lacking in publicity and it was only a week before Christmas when I heard about it.



Image from http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0102qfj/Room_on_the_Broom/

Because of this it surprised me with how good it is - it's incredibly funny, not least because of the Gromit like actions of the Cat, who feels increasingly frustrated by the Witch and resorts to blunt, silent representations of this that seem aimed more at adults than children. The whole film is littered with small, often quick visual jokes and it's charm here is only equaled by the style of animation used. It's computer animation but because of the almost cell-shaded look it has a heavier, denser feeling that reminded me more of stop motion animation than computer. Consequently it almost captured the same quirkiness of stop motion (not quite though, nothing can match that specific level of charm). 

In 25 minutes it manages to establish a group of characters and their individual personalities extremely well and usually without the need for dialogue, which I loved as it pushed focus, emotion and strength onto the images. It's immensely enjoyable, though the only thing that I felt a little disappointed at was the use of a similar threat (of being eaten by a monster) like in Donaldson's other books. Despite that I think it's definitely the best out of the Christmas time adaptations so far.

Room on the Broom can be found on the BBC iplayer.