Wild Life
2011 · 13m · Canada
Directed by Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby
Genres: animation, comedy, historical
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, whimsical
In this animated short set in 1909, a refined young English remittance man is sent to ranch in Alberta, but his love of badminton, birdwatching and liquor, and nothing in his upbringing, prepares him for the harsh realities of the New World.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A period comedy about a useless English dandy getting wrecked by Alberta ranching sounds like the setup for every other fish-out-of-water bore, but Forbis and Tilby weaponize the whimsy—turning genteel defeat into something genuinely unsettling, which is the only reason it works.
This is the kind of formally precise historical comedy that knows exactly what it owes to tradition—the tonal DNA of Ealing meets the animation rigor of the NFB school—and executes with such considered restraint that the melancholy underneath the humor feels earned and architectural.
The decision to animate this in a style that mirrors early 20th-century illustration—all muted palette and deliberate, slightly stiff movement—transforms what could be broad farce into something genuinely poignant; it's the visual language doing all the heavy lifting on the pathos.