SNAPSHOT
It’s not easy for a movie-star to age – especially when you’re a stop motion animated skeleton monster. Phil, once a terrifying villain of the silver-screen, struggles to find work in modern Hollywood due to being an out-of-date special effect. Rebooted is written & directed by Australian filmmaker Michael Shanks (courtesy YouTube (c) First Showing)
Ah, how quickly time flies – even when you’re a skeleton!
Or perhaps, precisely because you are a skeleton and after a glittering career starring in a Jason and The Argonauts-type film, 10,000 Sandals!, you’re increasingly not in demand because, well, CGI can do you better and more cheaply than you can.
It’s an invidious place to be, with the quick march of digital progress leaving you on the scrapheap of cinematic history, and Phil, poor Phil the skeleton is not handling it well, poor guy, his days filled with either trying to resuscitate his moribund monster career or imagining how he could strike back at those who have sidelined him.
Will he ever find peace? Maybe, but not before he brings real emotional heart and, ironically, life, to Rebooted, a film which beautifully and affectingly captures what it’s like to become a relic of the past and to wonder if there’s any way to be relevant again.