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11 out of 15 people found the following review useful: Cute in a snuff flick kind of way., 25 March 2002 Author: Evil Iggy from Maryland, U.S.A.
Although the content may seem a little harsh to some viewers I found it to be quite amusing. The concept of your final reward being the same regardless of your actions on earth (or in that very after life) strikes me as a creepy kind of practical joke by the cosmos. Perhaps he was an evil person in life and was in hell from the very beginning. This is simply the fates way of adding insult to injury (or irony to eternity in this case.) I can think of nothing worse than an eternity of nothingness and confusion (except of course for having to sit through an eternity of academy awards shows.)
7 out of 9 people found the following review useful: 90% Perfect, 8 April 2002 Author: Ray Hill (battlepope9000@hotmail.com) from St. Louis
Though this film is more clever than impressive, its blending of styles and the texture of the movie in general should have beat out the God awful "For the Birds" for the Oscar. The animation is first rate and the gorestick is classy as hell. The movie would be like a cross between Chuck Jones and Sam Rami if only the soldier looked like Bruce Campbell.
3 out of 4 people found the following review useful: Glad 'For The Birds' Beat This Out, 25 August 2008 Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
I agree totally with another of the reviewers here who was pleased "For The Birds" won the Oscar in 2002 for "Best Animated Short," not this sick material, which is pretentious at best and appealing to anyone, of course, who has no belief in heaven or hell.The animation was good, but so are a lot of animated shorts. And, by the way, I love dark humor but this just was unappealing from the start.As for the story here: a guy walking around and surrounded by nothing but grey (symbolism here) is told by a TV set (which appears every few hundred yards away) that he is in either heaven, hell, or purgatory. Each time he puts a gun to his head and shoots himself after hearing the news. I guess that would be funny in two of the three instances.
1 out of 2 people found the following review useful: Three nice minutes of your time, 19 December 2006 Author: rbverhoef (rbverhoef@hotmail.com) from The Hague, Netherlands
'Fifty Percent Grey' takes only three minutes of your time to watch and you might as well give it that. It shows a soldier waking up in a grey area, empty except for a television and a video recorder. He plays the tape which tells him he is dead and the place he is seeing is heaven. He decides to shoot himself waking up in the same place, although the television and video recorder have changed a little. I will leave the clue for you to discover.This may not be a great animated short, it definitely works. There even seems a little hidden theme in the way the place looks like, especially when he wakes up two more times after he has shot himself. The animation is good, the Oscar nominated film itself quite entertaining.
2 out of 4 people found the following review useful: Delicious irony, 10 May 2004 Author: bagelvendorman from Massachusettes
I had the good fortune to see this short in The Animation Show (both in the theatres and on my new DVD) and it was one of my favorites in the program.A soldier wakes up in a endless plane of grey and white with a gaping hole in his stomach. Nearby he finds a brand new widescreen TV which informs him he is dead and in heaven. Not wanting to be stuck here for eternity, he promply blows his brains out.This short is cleverly ironic in that the soldier starts a hero, turns into a coward and ultimately ends up a fool. A well animated short...well deserved of its Oscar nommination.Grade: A
1 out of 3 people found the following review useful: Nice graphics, but amazingly depressing and unsatisfying, 8 February 2008 Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida
This film was a nominee for the Oscar for Best Animated Short for 2002. The film that won that year was FOR THE BIRDS--a film I enjoyed much more than FIFTY PERCENT GREY. While FIFTY was a nice film to look at graphically, the story didn't catch my attention. Plus, it was awfully depressing and unsatisfying. Now I am NOT saying that films or short films must be funny and sweet like FOR THE BIRDS (heck, I like a dark film as much as the next person), but here it just didn't catch my attention and the film didn't seem particularly noteworthy. Perhaps it was a slow year for the Oscars or perhaps I just don't see it the way others do (and this is very, very possible). It's just that the final punchline didn't seem all that funny or interesting. Sorry.
1 out of 3 people found the following review useful: Short and Sweet, 26 October 2006 Author: Polaris_DiB from United States
This short film functions like a good joke with one of those punchlines that keeps you thinking and laughing about it for long afterward. A soldier awakes in a place that's fifty percent white, fifty percent gray, with only a television to denote landscape. Imagine that scene in the Matrix where Morpheus teaches Neo what exactly the Matrix is. The soldier turns on the television and learns that he's dead......and the rest would be ruining the joke. Just take my word for it that it's very bitter, very funny, and very worth it.The animation's pretty good. I think one of the best parts about it is the timing and editing, considering the humor aspect of it. It's not the completely beautiful fully developed animation that we're slowly getting used to and beginning to expect, but it serves its purpose effectively here, and that's what matters the most.--PolarisDiB
3 out of 14 people found the following review useful: Great animation in search of a story, 21 February 2002 Author: MovieAlien from az
There were few or no technical flaws in this short, which in 3 minutes follows a lone soldier in eternity (a completely white horizon with TVs and VCRs that tell him where he is). He tries multiple rounds of suicide, but he wakes up at every instance, and he's in a different part of the same place (according to the TV).Who is this guy? How did he get there? I think if this film were more developed it has potential of being something very groundbreaking. However, you can't fault the sound, which is extremely tight.
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