Fly and hit a couple branches on the way down.

An interesting movie from Richard Bevis created for the Short Film Festival. Fly is about a young, discontented boy who watches his parents arguing just outside of his room. Unable to tolerate it, he hops aboard his bike and rides off to escape from his life for a while. He stops near the seashore and sits contemplatively. While doing so, a fly catches his attention and motions for him to follow him. The boy is then flown through a colorful galaxy of stars and planets.

That's what I was able to deduce, at least, as there is no dialogue in the movie. Instead the entire film is played against the song "Fly" by Hilary Duff. While such a prospect would normally incite giggles amongst a community such as this, it actually works reasonably well, and Bevis does a fair job of telling the story. At least enough to prevent the viewer from getting confused.

The first thing that came to mind while watching this is how similar the movie is to Bevis' other film, Dance of the Firefly. Fly, however, seems a little more rushed and feels like it's just playing on the success of its predecessor. The movie is told pretty decently for the first half, where the boy is at home and when he's outside. When he is transported to the colorful space realm, however, the movie starts to feel like it's losing some of its luster. It starts to dump in a bunch of fancy expansions for what seems like merely the sake of doing so. The boy flies past a lot of ugly, overly-contrasted stars and simplistic Superdings shapes with bright Custom Palette colors while phrases like "Believe in yourself" are scattered about randomly. If you've ever seen one of those cheesy motivational posters that they hang in classrooms, this is basically the music video version of one of those. Honestly, if the message of the film were "Reading...is an adventure!" the impact would have been pretty much the same.

As for the visual aspect of the film, it's pretty cool, but it's nothing groundbreaking, at least considering what it easily could have been if there was more time (I understand Bevis had some technical problems with the film on top of some time constraints). The scenery features some neat-looking use of expansions. The space scene, as I mentioned, felt very lacking in terms of form or planning. Also, the animation moves a little fast in some places, especially when the boy is riding his bike. There's just a lack of fluidity throughout the movie.

Anyway, the movie is worth at least one watch. Richard Bevis certainly has a lot of potential that seems as-of-yet untapped. I wanna see more from you, Richard. MORE.

[Richard Bevis]

Thanks for the review XD