The Surreal Movies and TV Blog!: [SHORTS REVIEW] Pop (1996)

Friday, August 22, 2025

[SHORTS REVIEW] Pop (1996)

Title: Pop

Country: United Kingdom

Genre: Surrealism / Comedy

Company: Aardman Animations

Directed by: Sam Fell

Year: 1996

MPAA Rating / TV Rating: N/A

Buy on: N/A

WATCH IT ON YOUTUBE!

The short starts off with a man who is waiting for a soda pop to come out of the machine, while his pet goldfish is getting irritated with being stuck inside a bowl. But then, the soda finally comes out of the machine and the man is ready to drink the soda, until the soda starts shaking uncontrollably and it flies out of the man's hands and once it reaches the man, the results are explosive!

So recently, I started checking out some of Aardman Animation's older shorts that they made throughout the 1980s and 1990s and one of the shorts that I stumbled upon was "Pop." After I started watching this short, I was quite surprised by how bizarre this particular short was and I was even more surprised that this short came from Aardman Animations, of all animation studios! When I think of Aardman Animations, I think mostly of "Wallace and Gromit" and "Shaun the Sheep," which are Aardman Animations' most popular animated series. But I never knew that Aardman Animations had created several shorts in the past and now, I'm more interested in checking them all out! "Pop" was a very interesting little, short film that was definitely one of the weirdest things that I have ever seen (which is really saying something as I've seen loads of weird shorts over the years). What made this film so interesting to watch is that it manages to turn its simple premise about a man just wanting to drink a soda pop on its head in the weirdest way possible and I absolutely loved that about this film! Another thing that I loved about this film were the bizarre designs of the characters. Now sometimes, a character's design can be a make it or break it scenario for me, depending on how disturbing looking the designs are. While the designs in this short are definitely creepy at times, I loved how weird the man and goldfish's faces were in this short and I especially loved the bizarre backgrounds in this short as they really made this short stand out from any other short that I have seen!

I don't really have that many issues with this short, but sometimes the designs of the characters can come off as being a bit creepy, especially with the man's eyes being heavily mismatched in some scenes.

Overall, "Pop" is a very intriguing and bizarre short that fans of Aardman Animations will definitely be interested in. If you are interested in checking out more of Aardman Animations' shorts, then I would definitely give "Pop" a watch!