Thanks for the memories!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This is a cute little CGI short. A character that looks something like Yoshi from the Super Mario Brothers series of Nintendo games is a down-and-out janitor at a nightclub where he dreams one day of singing on stage--except that he's a terrible singer and clumsy at that. After a short series of misadventures he hears that the Chubbchubbs are coming and tries to warn the crowd, only to find more misadventures. Finally, he sees himself protecting a group of cute, fuzzy little creatures while face-to-face with giant, glowering warriors... and a final twist gives him everything he ever wanted.As for it's Academy Award, I'm rather uncertain why this one stuck out over the much stronger Das Rad (for CGI work) and infinitely more compelling Atama Yama (for hand-drawn animation). But that's the nature of the Academy, really--seldom do they choose something that is really qualitative, and there's always a bias in there.Anyway, this is a fun short, but easily forgettable and doesn't offer anything really new to the underdog narrative or CGI animation.--PolarisDiB

The reason I saw CHUBBCHUBBS! is not at all typical. I never saw HAPPY FEET (which was bundled with CHUBBCHUBBS! when released) but saw just this short film because I read a review on IMDb for THE CATHEDRAL--a picture that lost to CHUBBCHUBBS! for the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 2003. This reviewer thought THE CATHEDRAL "was robbed" and they hated CHUBBCHUBBS!--and this encouraged me to see for myself if they were right.From the onset, CHUBBCHUBBS! was an entirely different film than THE CATHEDRAL--having all the charm and polish you'd expect from a large CG studio, whereas THE CATHEDRAL looked more like a cut scene from a video game or an experimental film. While I strongly want to encourage young film makers, the quality and polish and completeness of the CHUBBCHUBBS! production was obvious--telling a first-class story in a manner that will not only impress film snobs but families as well. In fact, of all the Oscar-nominated films that year, the best short of the year probably was still THE CHUBBCHUBBS!, but I was surprised as how wonderful and original DAS RAD was--it sure was better than THE CHUBBCHUBBS in several ways, though I think THE CHUBBCHUBBS is definitely more the crowd pleaser.Because other reviewers have discussed the plot, I'll just wrap it up by saying while this is far from the best short I've seen in recent days, it is very enjoyable and is good for a nice laugh. I particularly liked all the references to previous sci-fi films, such as STAR WARS, E.T. and FORBIDDEN PLANET.

I am quite certain that had the voters seen any of the other shorts nominated for the Oscar that year (well, maybe not Pixar's deplorable "Mike's New Car"), they wouldn't have voted for this. ChubbChubbs is as mindless and boring as the movie it accompanies on DVD: Men in Black II. The main character is cloying and the only thing going for this animated short is that any kid older than 2 will understand what's going on. Judging by the content, that's the target audience. There's absolutely nothing awardworthy about this sacchrine piece of fluff: ChubbChubbs is joylessly calculated to make you giggle and go "awwww...", without a clever or truly heartwarming moment.

The graphics were quite good, appearing (at least in small form) to be on a par w/ Pixar's.But the visual gags are the best part of this short. In particular, the references to "Star Wars" and "E.T." Other than those, "Chubbchubbs" was a cute and consistently amusing, yet never hilarious animated short.