A Year in Shorts Day 7: "Feast"

While they're not making them at the rate that they used to, the Walt Disney company still puts out a respectable stream of animated shorts to pair with their movies. Some of them feature characters from their feature films (like the unholy abomination that was Olaf's Frozen Adventure), but far more interesting are the standalone shorts like today's film, Feast.

(via imdb)

Released in 2014 and directed by Patrick Osborne, Feast tells the story of your basic romantic comedy from the perspective of a dog. The film's central hook is that the dog loves to eat junk food, which his owner always shares with him, but everything changes when said owner starts dating a vegetarian.

What follows is fairly predictable, but very cute. In fact, that sums up Feast in a nutshell. The jokes are solid, the dog is adorable, and the animation (using the same technique Disney pioneered in their previous short, the masterful Paperman) is pleasing to look at. All in all, it's a good short?

But did it deserve the Oscar?

(via Giphy)

I remember keeping up with Twitter the night Feast won, and there was definitely some minor grumbling that it didn't get the Oscar so much for being the best short as it did for being the short the most people had seen. And it's hard to argue with that; Feast certainly had the widest release of the nominees, being attached to Big Hero 6 (which I would argue also won its Oscar just by virtue of being the animated film more people had seen).

While I haven't seen all the nominees for Animated Short from that year, I can say that Feast certainly wasn't the best of them. A Single Life was more clever, and The Bigger Picture had more clever and unique animation. But the simple fact of the matter is that it's likely more people have seen Feast than have seen the other two shorts.

While the future of theatrical exhibition is currently in doubt, if we get it back I hope we find space for short films not created by Disney or Pixar. There are a lot of fantastic shorts created each year, and they deserve to be seen by as many people as possible.

But all that said, I don't hold grudges over undeserved Oscar wins. Well, except maybe one against Rex Harrison.

This man beat Peter Sellers, Richard Burton AND Peter O'Toole. Never forget. Never forgive.

Whatever the case may be, Feast is still an enjoyable watch, and there are worse things in the world to be.

Feast is available to watch on Disney +.

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