Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely Brilliant!

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

This short by John Halas and Joy Batchelor was nominated for an Academy Award for Animated Short. There will be spoilers ahead: The basic premise of this is that automobiles, having built up in numbers, size and purpose to an absurd degree, have ground to a halt through perpetual gridlock. Everyone now lives in stationary cars stacked in layers.Naturally, people being people, there's still a striving by many to better their neighbors, which calls for MORE cars, which still don't go anywhere but up. Disaster is inevitable.While cars are the ostensible target here, science and human nature are really what's being skewered here. The animation is rather dated and limited, but the short is more than worth watching.This short can be found on a DVD with five other Halas and Batchelor shorts which is included in a book about the animators, titled Halas and Batchelor Cartoons, An Animated History, by their daughter Vivien Halas and Paul Wells. Halas and Batchelor are significant to animation in general and to animation in the UK. The book itself is very good and the shorts on the DVD are well done and all are worth watching. Automania 2000 is recommended.

I am mainly familiar with the animation work of British husband-and-wife team John Halas and Joy Batchelor via their wonderful cartoon adaptation of George Orwell's political allegory ANIMAL FARM (1955); though this one-reeler got a favourable assessment in "Leslie Halliwell's Film Guide" and was nominated for an Oscar, I never had the opportunity to catch it until I decided to check its availability via "You Tube" on a whim! I still did not expect it to be this surreal, or so thoroughly effective – to say nothing of prophetic – as a satire on society's obsession with automobiles, something which I thankfully am not bothered with myself...as I do not even own a car, despite having acquired a driving licence years ago (and which is why I can never understand some people's adulation for anything equipped with an engine)! Anyway, Science is content here to supply to the public demand for larger (the one point it did not get right, since things are actually becoming increasingly microscopic in size) and ever more sophisticated models (eventually being also able to reproduce themselves!). The result of this sees the whole planet engulfed by motor vehicles, so much so that their owners (and immediate families) are forced to take up residence inside them! The visualization of a massive pile-up of machines and helicopters flying above to provide the necessary sustenance and medical attention to the trapped occupants is delightful...but the solitary manufacturer himself, previously safe up in his proverbial ivory tower, is ultimately overwhelmed by his own creations. The stylish film is colourful and great fun – and, at this stage, makes me wonder what other gems of its ilk (or, for that matter, Short Subjects in general) may have been eluding me all this time...

This little film is supposed to be set in the year 2000 and is all about the car. Apparently, it impressed the folks at the Oscar committee because it was nominated for an award in the category Best Cartoon Short.While I do understand that the early 1960s were not a very good time period for quality cartoons due to reduced frame rates and simplistic animation in order to save money, this film is lame even by the standards of the day. The biggest problem is that the film is neither funny nor interesting nor particularly well made. It's a lot like a dull lecture--a lecture I could have done without.

Stylish and surreal early 1960s British cartoon, produced by Halas and Batchelor, depicting the unstoppable rise of the motor car. Synopsis: Once there was a time when car owners actually drove their motors from A to B - on roads! Can you believe that? And it was even a pleasant experience! Now, though, in the year 2000, since the roads are so crowded, people cannot move anyplace so they live in their cars full time. Mother does the knitting; Father watches TV; the kiddies are tucked up in bed, all inside the family car. Cars are so plentiful that they are piled up on top of each other, reaching high into the sky. Eventually the ultimate vehicle is produced: a car that can reproduce itself, and that can eat other cars - not to mention the scientists who created it. Shame about the gridlock though.With drawings very much in the style of the time (pointy heads; distorted perspective; bright angular backgrounds - remember those early Pink Panther cartoons?) this is an excellent period cartoon, and deservedly a multiple award-winner. Watch out for it at animation festivals.