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★★★★★
Directed by: #ChrisBrake
Written by: Chris Brake
Starring: #TrevorMann, #WendyFisher, #JosephClowser, #MaxBavington and #LaraGallagher
One man’s trash is another man's treasure, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade....and so forth.
Yeah we have heard it all before, garbage, garbage everywhere, do you’re recycling, USE THE PROPER BINS!!!! There is 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic waste in the world at this moment, so isn’t it nice that an old man who is lonely decided to make friends out of it...yes, yes it is nice.
Scraps is a story of just that, the tale of Gordon [played by Trevor Mann] who has crafted a family of his own out of all the garbage he has produced over the time spent in his flat, lovingly they sit placed round the table, eating a meal with him, and reflected on the T.V is a family in the 50’s, displaying all the values and love he so clearly longs for.
He bumbles around, trying to keep the people who are real in his life, while trying to keep those who are not in one piece. Everything feels disjointed, kind of a shambles, almost like the puppets he surrounds himself with, the main puppet's head is made of half a football and eggs...I’m sure that helps you get a better idea of what I’m talking about, yeah eggs.
As it all seems to be falling apart, his loneliness closing in on him, football egg face boy [that’s his Christian given name] comes to the rescue, revealing himself to be alive to his creator and father, allowing the pair to both fill a void in their lives, a void to feel wanted.
Visually this short is faultless, the #puppets, the set, the costumes, everything falls into place so well, creating the mish-mashed lifestyle of our leading man Gordon right before our eyes. Just from looking at his apartment you feel kinda dirty, like a session with the bleach spray really wouldn’t go a miss, but that’s a good thing, we need to be fully immersed in his world to fully be immersed in the emotional content.
Talking of emotional content, Scraps is brimming with it, telling the tale of not just a man who makes puppets, we don’t need that, Pinocchio annoyingly already exists, but more a tale of loneliness, of isolation, which is something we all have experienced at some point in our lives, and so can all relate to.
So deep within my #robot body, even I, your favourite film critic felt a moment of connection to football egg face boy and his daddy, and that should be enough to make you pull up your bean bag chair, crack open a packet of Jaffa Cakes and get ready to feel real feelings, as you delve into the messy but creative world of Gordon and his puppet pals, and then make a wife from that Jaffa Cake wrapper...go on, help the earth.
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