Arthur de Pince's La Révolution des Crabes (2004)

NOTE: This Monday short was originally posted on July 30, 2018. We are re-uploading Peter Hemminger's original Monday Shorts until further notice.

A hit on the animation circuit in the early 2000s, La Révolution des Crabes is, in many ways, a very simple film. Its strict black-and-white rendering and simple character designs probably owe a lot to technological restrictions, but looking back 14 years later, they've aged surprisingly well—no one will mistake it for cutting-edge animation, but its limitations feel more like conscious decisions than aging technology. Plus, simplicity suits its story, which follows as straight and narrow a path as the crabs it depicts. Whether there's a moral to it is up for you to decide—director Arthur de Pince flirts with some ideas around conformity, individuality and revolution, but none of them are particularly fleshed out. That's ok, though. What the crabs lack in depth, they more than make up for in charm.