recommended

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

"Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions" is an American 5.5-minute animated short film from 1991 written, directed and produced by Henry Selick, who was in his late 30s at that point and still a pretty long time away from his Oscar nomination for Coraline. But in terms of darkness, absurdity and bizarreness, you can easily see his cinematic handwriting in this pretty awkward and creepy little short film. sadly I must say the film never lived up to my expectations beyond the solid approach in style. Voice acting, even if there aren't too many voices, is solid too. The characters feel too forgettable though in my opinion. I don't know if they intended to follow up on this one with a sequel, series or even full feature film, but maybe it was okay they did not because I think i would not have had too much interest to check it out. This one here is not a failure, but also not really on a level where I would recommend it, not even to Coraline lovers as I am kind of one myself and thiese 5 minutes did extremely little for me. Sure you cannot do too much wrong at this running time, but still the best decision here is to skip it perhaps.

I first saw this early Henry Sellick animated short at a festival of animated short films. I had never heard of Sellick before, but after seeing this, I thought..."Wow, I'll have to keep my baby greens open for any other works by him". This dreamy,surreal short would be the perfect film to be screened at just about any midnight movie,before the main feature (if,in fact,midnight movies still existed--with the possible exception of 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)',which would work,as well). I would imagine it would also work at a screening of surreal,experimental,avant garde films,too. I can't imagine this strange little film being aired on television (outside of being aired in the early hours of the morning,on the Sundance,or IFC channel). No rating,but too bizarre/cerebral to rate.

Henry Selick, known best for directing "The Nightmare Before Christmas", has a vivid imagination. He can create worlds from nothing, and draws audience into these made up fantasy places. But, even for a fantasy setting to work, a base is needed. "Nightmare Before Christmas" we are told that this is in Halloweentown, and that each holiday has it's own door, so when the plot begins unraveling, it makes sense. That's not the case here. Whatever this short is about is up to the viewer to decide, but it certainly isn't something that most can pick up right away.A pair of clay animated conjoined twin sisters get out of bed only to see live action Slow Bob get transported to another dimension. In this dimension, people are alive in pictures, and scissors are attacking the town. Bob stops the scissors and is transported back to this house, only to have the twins paint him yellow. His watch then talks to him.This is a crazy short. It's stylish, and especially reminiscent of Selick's later film "James in the Giant Peach" in the amount of animation styles there are, but it makes no sense. Perhaps it's a message saying that though people may not seem important, they still are, but it's a very convoluted message. The saving grace of this short is the bizarre style, which is unique to Selick. This world he created may make no sense, and may be strange, but it's interesting to look at.Not much of a story can be found here, but a cornucopia of animation styles and neat effects are prevalent.My rating: *** out of ****. 6 mins.

After seeing the short film "Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions," I filed away the name Henry Selick as one to watch. This work is an ambitious and intriguing mixture of animation techniques, and the results are both whimsical and surreal. The background music, carefully composed by the Residents, augments the visuals seamlessly. "Slow Bob" is worthwhile viewing for Selick fans and animation fans in general.