SHORTS (2009) * What was Robert Rodriguez thinking? I mean, and not much of it whatever it was. He's a good director, an original director, and his best stuff often emotes a healthy sentimentality. But here it's just schlocky schmaltz, as if someone with half his mind is trying to imitate him. This is complicated by trying to keep the story alive by telling it in disjointed and distemporalized spurts--but it just comes off as a hide the rotten egg trick. It has the elements you might look for from Rodriguez: wise children, metaphysical warnings, commentaries on commercialism and materialism and ego...but none are deep, none pack any punch, and all feel like they're borrowed from somebody else; a re-telling of a joke that the second guy didn't quite get the point of. There's nothing either wrong with or impressive about the kid actors, and they run to show to such an extent that even a first tier adult (think Rodriguez, think Antonio Banderas) probably couldn't have salvaged it much. But they could have at least accentuated the dumbest parts, to let you know they share your pain.
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