Comedy is all about timing, and one would be hard-pressed to find an animated short that makes better use of 60 seconds than Aggelos Papantoniou’s Shitty City 4.
Short, simple, and perfectly executed, the film tells just one joke, again and again, over the course of its brief runtime.
Fans of wordplay are likely to find themselves chuckling joyously at the frustration of the film’s two young protagonists. Brilliantly-crafted looks of agony on the boys’ faces hammer home the absurdity of the situation, as do their sighs and the mounting piles of taxis landing on rooftops and filling gardens. Even the camerawork has a forlorn, existential dread to it as it slowly pans back from the frustrated boys as they click away for the three-million-somethingth time.