AMON
2024 · 8m
Directed by Justine King
Genres: animation, comedy, family
Tones: absurdist, humorous, whimsical
The innocent tuxedo cat Amon turns five and is getting ready for his graduation -- but his big mischievous plan is to rule the world.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A tuxedo cat planning world domination sounds like the kind of elevator pitch that makes you groan, but King's actually betting everything on the absurdist escalation—treating a five-year-old's megalomaniacal scheming with the dead-serious tone of a spy thriller. It's dumb in exactly the way I respect.
The whimsy here risks collapsing into saccharine territory, but there's a formal discipline in how King structures the graduation-as-coronation conceit—the film understands it's working within a lineage of anthropomorphic character comedy that demands restraint to land.
The magic lives in whatever directorial choice makes us believe in Amon's ambition as genuine rather than cute—whether it's a single shot held too long, or a voice performance that plays the stakes completely straight—that's the decision that separates this from a greeting card.