Creature Comforts on AllMovie

Creature Comforts is an Oscar-winning animated short from Aardman Animations and director Nick Park, the creator of the Wallace & Gromit series. As in his other works, Park mingles claymation and multidimensional characterizations with a dry, distinctly British sense of humor; this time around, his subject is the lives of animals in an English zoo. The film employs a documentary-like structure, presenting a series of interviews with zoo animals about their lives and homes. The central joke is that all the zoo's inhabitants speak with recognizably British voices and mannerisms, from a slightly embarrassed turtle to an enthusiastic polar bear cub. They express different viewpoints about zoo life, with some appreciating the security and care provided by their environment, but others bemoaning the confined space and unnatural environment. (One of the characters, a disgruntled mountain lion, is a recent immigrant from Brazil who complains that while his home country may have had less technology, at least it had warm weather and plenty of space.) Indeed, the dialogue spoken by Park's comical creatures sounds as if it was lifted verbatim from interviews with London residents about their apartments.