Just James

Directed by Matt Hickinbottom

2024

Nominated at the 2024 Midlands Movies Awards for Best Animated Film, Just James is written by Carmen Capuano and animated by previous Midlands Movies Award-winner Matthew Hickinbottom with music by Meiling Zhong.

The 4-minute short tells of a shy man who gets on a bus and makes eye contact with a seated lady, yet his awkwardness gets the better of him and can only admire her from afar.

He then imagines what could be if he could get up the courage to speak to her as we are transported to his idyllic daydream. But back in reality on the bus, the woman disembarks yet leaves her scarf behind. Could this be the moment James strikes up a conversation?

Unfortunately, he is unable to find her and returns to his apartment. And back home uses the scarf to create a makeshift companion - out of his broom no less - to tide over his loneliness. But sometime later, a coincidence on the bus involving a lady in matching clothes implies the future may not be so bleak for James after all.

Made in a Pixar-esque 3-D style, the animation is a step-up from Hickinbottom’s previous feature. The lead James, and I mean this in an animation sense, has a Shrek-like quality which ensures the character doesn’t look like a “floaty” sprite either.

Another good technical aspect is the use of camera focus giving the world some real dimension and raising its visuals above certain TV-standard fare. The excellent music too is used to give a good tone to the tale and has a twinkle of Toy Story’s Randy Newman with its sweet piano and gentle strings.

My one worry is that despite the cheery music and obvious narrative purpose, James’ making–a-woman-from-a-mop felt slightly more Todd Phillips’ Joker than jokey. However, the good intentions are present and the short appears to be exploring more than honourable issues of loneliness, isolation and sensitive social interactions.

Also without any dialogue in the short, the trio of creatives behind Just James have collaborated well to pool their talents to focus on images and melodies to get their story across and they again do this well.

Just James definitely shows that animation is still very much a hotbed of creativity in the Midlands. And its outlook is certainly very promising when a homemade CGI short can be produced with such great passion and skill.

★★★★

4 / 5

Mike Sales