Logorama
Entry updated 18 August 2025. Tagged: Film.
French animated short film (2009). H5. Directed by François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy, and Ludovic Houplain. Written by François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy, Ludovic Houplain and Gregory J Pruss. Voice cast includes Sherman Augustus and Bob Stephenson. 16 minutes. Colour.
In Los Angeles, California, two snacking cops (Augustus and Stephenson) are notified of a suspect in their vicinity: "answers to the name Ronald, considered armed and dangerous"; they see him getting into a nearby van and a car chase ensues until an accident forces the suspect to make a last stand in a restaurant. This quickly becomes redundant when a massive earthquake wrecks the city (see Disaster) and the tectonic upheaval changes the surrounding landscape, causing flooding; Ronald (Stephenson) does not survive. We see two survivors on an Island, then the camera tracks back into deep space, with many celestial objects passing by.
The police officers are Michelin Men; all the City's other inhabitants are brand mascots too, whether human, humanoid, anthropomorphized or other. Ronald is, of course, Ronald MacDonald. Similarly, items of infrastructure – buildings, vehicles and suchlike – are heavily branded or take the form of corporate logos or icons; the same is true of objects in space, and inevitably those for Mars and Milky Way appear in the final scene. Humorous and nicely animated, Logorama is a mild but enjoyable Satire of corporate America, where Los Angeles is literally a Media Landscape: everyone and everything is Advertising. It won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and the Kodak Discovery Award for Best Short Film at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. [SP]
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