ridiculous rating

It is a performances centric movie

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

"In a Heartbeat" is a very unusual film. Two students from the Ringling College of Arts and Design, Esteban Bravo and Beth David, made this animated short as their final graduation project. That in and of itself is not unusual. However, when the short was released on YouTube, it received 20,000,000 hits in the first five days!! To this date, over 34,000,000 have watched the film. So, considering how popular the film was, as well as the quality of the project, it's odd that it was not nominated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the Oscar for Best Animated Short. In fact, it wasn't even included as one of the commended films when the animated shorts were shown in the weeks preceding the Oscars. I have no idea why it wasn't chosen...especially in light of how incredibly mediocre the actual nominees were.The story itself is very simple and is told without words. A gay young man (I am guessing about Middle School age) is smitten with a classmate. To illustrate this, Bravo and David used a heart...a literal heart...to show the boy's intense feelings. And, like most intense feelings from teens, he's unable to control the heart...and it literally bursts from the boy's chest and begins chasing after the other boy. What's next? See the film.The bottom line is that this film has spoken to a lot of people and it's very well made...so well made that I am anxious to see more from these bright young graduates.

...or moving, or touching, or adorable. it is one of films remembering basic experiences and our reactions. two boys. and a heart. sweet humor and delicate way for translate a feeling so familiar and the answers so well known. provocative for theme, seductive for its subject, it is a joy to discover this adorable animation gem. for the right support. for memories and regrets and answers. so, a film about yourself. and not an ordinary one.

Considering the fact I live in Australia, I have a feeling that this short film might be classified M rather than G, because of the homosexual theme. That is a double standard, but at the same time it shows that same-sex relationships can be just as touching as opposite-sex relationships.The story was simple, yet so beautiful. The stereotypes of same-sex relationships have been challenged by doing a sexual orientation role reversal in a similar presentation that opposite-sex relationships are often depicted, but there are some differences too. It is not a complete template of a role reversal, where the middle school boy suppressed his attraction to another middle school boy. If it was a template on a opposite-sex relationship, then the love suppressing scene would not be in there in the first place. I wonder if they will do a similar thing, this time with the traditional roles on sexual orientation we are familiar with being reversed, where the middle school boy falls in love with a middle school girl, which could be very interesting. All in all, simple yet beautiful story.The animation in this short is colourful and the music really got and I nearly cried with the use of the music playing, which was so beautiful.I consider this short animated film to be a must watch, since it can be used as a driving force for same-sex marriage becoming a reality, including my country, Australia. This is coming from a heterosexual male who is challenging the stereotypes of heterosexual males himself. I hope this short will not be banned in some countries, like Kuwait and Malaysia, for example. But it seems that the ban in those countries is inevitable. It is a bit of a tear-jerker for me.

"In a Heartbeat" is a very new (2017) animated short film and the first filmmaking credit for writers and directors Bravo and David. If I see it correctly, this managed almost 3 million views on a single day after its upload on Youtube. It shows though that you don't need to excel on a high level in order to get famous. It probably also helps that no dialogue is in here, so no matter which languages you (don't) speak, you can watch and understand it. The story may seem sweet with a school boy falling in love with his school mate and being scared of how everybody may find out about the crush. Now, I am not even sure if the filmmakers wanted to emphasize homosexuality in here because the situation may have been equally embarrassing for him had his love interest been a girl, but yeah lets just say depicting the other kids subtly as homophobes is not hurting the film's popularity. Sadly it is messages like these about teenagers allegedly growing up as homophobes that really fuel the last remaining bits of homophobia in our utterly tolerant society. I would not even say the filmmakers are necessarily to blame for it as I am not sure to which extent they foresaw the way people would perceive certain moments here. The happy end feels forced to me and not entirely realistic, more on the gooey, for-the-sake-of-it side, but that's just subjective thinking. I found it a fairly kitschy film overall, also with the graphic depiction of the heart and how it broke. Not convinced by anything except the visual side. I am sure this will not stay the only filmmaking credit by the duo who made this and here's hoping they can step things up a bit in the story-telling department. They made a smart decision here because homosexuality in animation is almost non-existent until now and it got many curious about this really short film, but it is nothing more than an extremely fragile foundation for a long career in the industry. Not recommended.