The Wrong Trousers (1993)

Some films arrive carrying the weight of a message. The Wrong Trousers arrives carrying a penguin in a rubber glove, and it asks nothing of us beyond attention. Nick Park's 1993 short concerns a dog displaced from his bedroom by a lodger, a diamond heist, and a pair of robotic trousers that walk on ceilings. That is the entire inventory. There is no thesis buried in the clay. The villain is mute. The hero never speaks. The moral universe of the piece extends roughly as far as do not rent a room to a criminal.

In an era that rewards cinema for its positions, this one holds none. The cast is a man, a dog, and a penguin, and the film declines to comment on the arrangement. Yorkshire supplies the backdrop. A museum supplies the diamond. The closest thing to social observation is that Wallace owes money and settles the debt with reward money, a transaction that endorses the existing order with quiet enthusiasm. Nothing here lectures. Nothing here petitions. The model train chase, which runs several minutes and remains the finest action sequence ever staged in a living room, is a triumph of craft and timing and contains no argument whatsoever.

It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, which suggests the Academy can occasionally be moved by excellence alone. Three decades on, the thing still works, and it works because it never stops to explain itself. We are left with a dog, a man, a penguin, and a set of trousers that refuse to stay retired. There is no lesson. There is only the chase, and the chase is enough.