By Romey Norton - October 14, 2024
First City Films brings animation, and sci-fi film Inventors to your screens, and it’s well worth investing your time in. Written and produced by Angelique Chase and Chip Lane, Inventors is a stop-motion animation film, (think Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Wallace and Gromit) and follows a team whose jobs are under threat, and could be replaced by platypuses going into space. There’s one chance, one competition left to keep their jobs and Jay is hell-bent on winning, so he’s ready to risk everything.
The opening sequence has a geeky, quirky, bop of a song, bringing a high level of energy to the film. But then the pace slows down as we watch two geeky teams try to come up with a winning idea. But the entertainment comes from how this film was made. Stop-motion is always impressive as so much time and thought goes into the production. So when watching try to appreciate every little movement that has gone into creating this film. If you don’t know what stop-motion is, it’s where animations are captured one frame at a time, with physical objects that are moved between frames. Playing these back rapidly creates the illusion of movement. Cool, right?
The characters are like Barbies, their mouths don’t move, so you rely on recognising their voices to know who’s talking. The characters also lack facial expressions, so the real story-telling comes from the voice acting. It’s to a high standard, you can understand the emotion and plot through their different tones and vocal sounds. The script is fun, with silly stories and drama. But the plot is simple and not a lot happens. The group splits into two teams and they have to come up with a design that will save their jobs. There was some competition, but I was waiting for something extreme to happen. However, the film does well in covering themes of friendship, relationships, workplace drama, identity, and how to handle pressure.
The set is all in one room, where the characters work, eat, sleep, and repeat. This doesn’t allow much room for audiences to understand their world. Having a few more locations could have added more depth and dimension to the film.
Towards the end, there are a few soft and inspiring musical numbers, as both teams fail and must now work together to create the ultimate invention to help mankind. I was hoping for a little office, doll romance but it never happened. Then the ending has a little, fun twist I wasn’t expecting, which proposes a really interesting and thought-provoking idea about creativity, imagination, and the lived human experience.
Overall, Inventors is an entertaining and clever stop-motion animation film. The ending credits are cute, giving a face to the voice behind the dolls. If you’re a fan of animations and want something easy to watch in under an hour and a half, then Inventors is for you!
Inventors is available to buy or rent on Prime Video
