Gopher Broke
2004 · 4m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Jeff Fowler
Genres: animation, comedy, family
A cheerful ground squirrel stations itself along a road frequented by trucks. It tries a series of schemes to obtain food from the passing vehicles.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a perfectly functional cartoon gag on repeat—squirrel gets flattened, squirrel tries again—and that's precisely why it leaves me cold. Consensus family entertainment, even when technically competent, isn't subversion.
Fowler's debt to classic Warner Bros. slapstick is evident in the timing and staging, though the execution feels more Pixar house-style than genuinely innovative within that lineage. Well-crafted but safe.
That final cut—where the squirrel's expression shifts from determination to resignation in a single frame before the next truck arrives—sells the whole premise; it's the only moment that transcends the formula and actually makes you feel complicit in the bit.