It is a performances centric movie

Better Late Then Never

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Love animation, it was a big part of my life as a child, particularly Disney, Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, and still love it whether it's film, television or cartoons.Chuck Jones deserves his status as one of animation's most legendary, greatest and most important directors/animators. He may have lacked the outrageousness and wild wackiness of Bob Clampett and Tex Avery, but the visual imagination, wit and what he did with some of the best-known and most iconic characters ever were just as special. 'The Dot and the Line' is the last of three Oscar/Academy Award wins for Jones, 'For Scent-imental Reasons' (one of Pepe Le Pew's best cartoons) and 'So Much for So Little' (more the appreciate than love cartoons for me) being the other two, of the three it's my personal favourite.It is not easy making something interesting, let alone sweet and romantic, out of Maths, which was always one of my least favourite subjects in school due to struggling to understand a lot of it. 'The Dot and the Line' does just that. The story is incredibly charming and touching, effective too in its simplicity and paced just right, not frenetic but never dull. Personally found the narration very pleasantly thoughtful and found myself learning a good deal. Robert Morley's delivery is nothing short of marvellous. Funny or hilarious 'The Dot and the Line' may not be, it isn't that kind of cartoon. Instead it is very educational but still managed the ideal balance of educating and entertaining.Animation is the more abstract style, for the story and that it deals with Maths and Geometry it suited the cartoon to a tee. It's simple but not cheap, with enough detail and colour to make it more appealing. Characters look very cute and are cute in personality too, it's not everyday where one cares for and develops an emotional attachment for shapes but it happens here. The music is a nice fit. Overall, beautiful and made me appreciate Maths more. 10/10 Bethany Cox

This is a 10-minute short film from 50 years ago that won the Oscar back then. And even if I did not like it as much as I hoped I would, I am still fine with this decision by the Academy. One reason is that I can see smart writing in here, even if it did not really appeal to me, but the much bigger reason is that it got Chuck Jones an Oscar finally. He was possibly the most notable cartoon director from the 20th century and it's nice to see him awarded finally. He co-directed this one with Maurice Noble, somebody who worked on films like "Dumbo" or "Snow White" and was also a prolific animator since the 1930s, just like Jones himself. "The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics" is probably a really good watch for everybody with an interest in mathematics, or I should maybe say geometry as I have always been quite fond of mathematics himself. The romance story in here was so-so and to me personally it felt more like an educational movie than something which really has a decent deal of emotion. They could have increased that one for sure. Then again, making a moving (in the sense of the heart) film about a cold and factual subject like mathematics is probably a really tough challenge. I guess Jones, Noble and Norman Juster made a solid job all in all taking this into account. However, I hoped for more looking at how this won an Oscar. Not recommended and there are hundreds of short films that Jones made that are better than this one.

I truly have to admire the works of Chuck Jones. He made a name for himself directing Bugs Bunny shorts for Warner Brothers starting in the 1940's (although he directed many other animated shorts during that era,including animated training films for the U.S. government,some of which featured scripts written by Theodore S.Geisel,later to be known & loved by generations as Dr.Suess),moving on to creating The Road Runner in the 1950's,and moving on even further to working on directing animated programs for television in the 1960's,to animated feature fare in the 1970's. Every now & again, he would surprise us with something different & left of centre. 'The Dot And The Line:A Romance In Lower Mathematics',a short he directed for M-G-M in 1965 is a shining example of this. The story (read by veteran British actor,Robert Morley)is simple:a straight line is madly in love with a dot,who only cares for an abstract squiggle line. This causes the line to re-evaluate his position on things. The concept of abstract animation is by no means a new idea, but Jones (with assistance from co-director/co-writer Maurice Noble)manage to pull it off nicely (the idea for animating abstract images actually hearkens back to silent films in the 1920's,and later augmented by classical music in the 1930's & beyond). Well worth seeking out if you're idea of animation is something that is exclusively for children.

Experimental animators usually commit the mistake of thinking that experimentalism must be hermetical, non-objective, and abstract. Chuck Jones proves his point by making an animation film which brings characters and a storyline, but makes it look like a wild piece of experimental animation.Without sound, the film would look like wild moving pieces. It's the narration and the soundtrack who do the trick. Weird non-objective mathematically abstract images who become human-like characters just with a little voice and music. Brilliant.I'm personally impressed by this piece, since I saw it on TV as a kid, and instead of learning mathematics out of it, I decided to be an experimental animator. And I am one now :)