Descendants (2008) Reviews

• Something impressive and well made

  Rectangular_businessman2012-12-15

  Wow. Who'd have ever thought that an animated short film about talking flowers could be so serious and dramatic? It was certainly much better than I was expecting it to be, having not only a great animation quality, but also beautiful and surprisingly dark story concerning death and revenge, with a bittersweet message of optimism which fortunately isn't delivered in a corny or forced way. It must be said that this isn't a short for kids (Little kids, at least) and certainly it could be way too grim for those viewers who still consider that all the animations are for children. (On the other side, I think that the "R" rating was an exaggeration since it wasn't really that violent or "disturbing") I really enjoyed this short animation and personally I would recommend it to anyone...But don't expect it to be something "happy" or "lighthearted" just because the main characters are talking flowers.

• Moving, Circle of Life Film

  Hitchcoc2019-05-02

  The use of anthropomorphic plants is really interesting. There was a certain weed killer commercial that used this technique. Here, a pretty pale flower with a little girl face longs to be more. A red flower, which appears to be poisonous, talks to her and tries to get her to face the realities of being a plant. From the start it is hard to embrace them because, let's face it, they are not going anywhere. The title involves the desire to produce descendants. How do they go about this. I thought the film was quite beautiful and thoughtful.

• An interesting take on good, evil and perspective

  Horst_In_Translation2017-05-10

  "Descendants" is a German/American co-production in the English language from 2008, so this little animated movies will have its 10th anniversary next year. The writer and director is Heiko van der Scherm and it is probably his most known work by now. There are only two voice actors in this one and one of them is Oscar winner Whoopi Goldberg, which elevated the film's popularity for sure. It's interesting how humans would see the deer in here as something cute, maybe beautiful, but to the flowers it is the ultimate enemy. Besides that, the most interesting character is probably the red flower as the white one is really all about naivete only. Overall, the ending may not have worked as well as it was intended, but to some extent it does and it is also a pretty beautiful movie. It is not suitable for a full feature film because of how dialogue-driven it is and because of the low quantity of characters and how it would not really work with more characters as these would work against the core plot. However, at 15 minutes (including credits), it is working out nicely. I recommend checking it out.