Johnny Express is a hilarious animated short film that plays cleverly with relationships of scale and an interconnected series of contrasts and juxtapositions.
Even the film’s title strikes us as sarcastic: can this glum-looking man whose spaceship is covered in litter really be the famously efficient star-travelling courier known as “Johnny Express”? When the spaceship lands on the planet where the recipient lives, viewers are momentarily awed by the sheer size of the place. But when the camera zooms out and changes the point of view, we see that the spaceship takes up almost the entire surface of what turns out to be a tiny planet. Dressed in a white spacesuit and devoid of any obvious enthusiasm, Johnny slackly sips a soft drink. Meanwhile, the miniscule intended recipient of the microscopic package is a violet-coloured extra-terrestrial with an incredibly expressive face – which can only be seen with powerful magnification! Thus the humour derives from constant changes in the scale of the shots, often through zooming in or out, showcasing characters and sets that are in total contrast to each other.
This network of opposites feeds the film’s comedy value and absurdist gags. What seems big is in fact small, and vice versa… depending on the point of view! While Johnny considers the delivery package to be tiny, its intended recipient sees the soda can as being almost as huge as a spaceship. Kids will have no trouble seeing the funny side of these games of scale and the resultant effects: everything is big or small, high or low. Near or far – but from which viewpoint? Who is looking and from where? This zany aspect of the film is strengthened by numerous exaggeration effects. For instance, Johnny has to zoom in 5,500% to make out the recipient of the package. As for the ending, the payoff comes with a large dose of irony: after all, isn’t the mission accomplished? When both the character and the set are pushed to the point of complete destruction, the only possible takeaway is a loud – and, yes, cruel – laugh!
