Gone Nutty

CinemaSerf

This is one of these short features that you might see in the cinema ahead of a main feature that can't quite make it to ninety minutes - and it's fine. "Scrat" is preparing for the bitter "Ice Age" winter by hoarding his collection of nuts in the stump of a dead tree. About to complete his collection, the last one steadfastly refuses to take it's place in the middle of his store. Try as he will, it keeps popping out until in frustration he ends up upsetting the entire supply - and this tree is perched perilously close to the edge of a precipice! Now on the acorn of a dilemma, what is our hapless rodent to do? Perhaps this wants to serve as a warning to us about the dangers of being too greedy, but in any case it provides the lads at Pixar with a chance to experiment, dialogue-free, with an amiable character whose bug-eyes do most of his talking for him - and here they do it entertainingly as he struggles to keep control of his carefully assembled but now tumbling fuel supply. This pretty much hits the ground running and watch the tail - it has a life of it's own.