You know how a movie can get so hyped up that by the time you see it your only possible reaction is, “that’s it?” Well, it definitely works for short films, though it’s not often enough that shorts gain so much attention. I mean “real” shorts, the kind that play at film festivals, not funny skits and user-generated YouTube videos (feel free to argue that many of these count as shorts; I won’t necessarily disagree). And yes, Spike Jonze’s We Were Once a Fairytale, which stars Kanye West, did play at a film festival (Los Angeles), so I guess that makes it a “real” short. And now it’s been leaked online (temporarily by Kanye, himself) just in time to make a (presumably) good companion piece to Jonze’s box office winner, Where the Wild Things Are.

After all the Tweeting and bloggery I noticed centered on the film last night and today, I’m pretty underwhelmed. I appreciate the stop-motion animation at the end, but otherwise I guess I just can’t really stand Kanye’s persona here  — fictionalized or not — and would have stopped it short had I not heard there would be some trippy shit eventually. Also, I’ve now learned that I need to stop watching TV shows and short films online while I eat my lunch. Between this and The Office wedding episode, I hope to never see someone vomiting (even if its rose petals) while I’m chewing food again. Besides, I’m far more interested in another upcoming Kanye collaboration, with animator Bill Plympton.

Check out other film bloggers’ reactions to the short after the jump:

• Rodrigo Perez at The Playlist gets the credit for bringing the film to the attention of the film blog masses. He discusses how it was supposed to be released to iTunes last month, prior to the infamous VMA incident but now has probably been officially postponed due to his shame:
  

  Would another date be scheduled once the Kanye controversy died down? Or was it just poor form, post-Swift incident and the filmmakers just let it naturally make it’s way onto the web? Who knows [...] Also note, if you’ve seen “Where The Wild Things Are” you know that little demon rat at the end does seem very much to be a part of the same aesthetic.

• Gil Kaufman at MTV.com addresses the post-VMA significance of this film:
  

  The sight of West woozily walking through the club and indulging in his trademark blustery talk was filmed nearly a year before his bum rush of Taylor Swift at the VMAs, a night when he was photographed swigging from a bottle of cognac. Seeing it now, along with the heavily symbolic birth/ death scene at the end is a bit disorienting, but also par for the course for the envelope-pushing Jonze, who always shies away from the obvious image. In lampooning West’s self-indulgent public persona, Jonze makes Kanye a more sympathetic character, on film at least, helping the rapper to rid himself of whatever demon is inside him in a cathartic, moving and powerful scene.

• Seth Abramovitch at Movieline agrees with a YouTube commenter’s theory about the film:
  

  One commenter suggests that this short film — made 8 months before he’d become a pop culture pariah for storming Taylor Swift’s moment — as proof that the VMA event was a planned part of a greater, ongoing spectacle: Kanye’s lifelong performance opera. “HOW I KILLED MY EGO - THE STORY,” he writes. “WE HATE him, AND THEN feel bad for him, leading our emotions like a good story teller does. andy kaufman style…. smart.”

  You know what? It might be giving West too much credit, and detracting from Jonze’s genius gifts of perception. But I like that theory. I like it a lot.

• Drew McWeeny at HitFix also addresses the relationships between this and both the VMA incident and the weekend’s box office:
  

  The weird part, though, is that this was all shot well before the Taylor Swift incident that turned Kanye into a target for all sorts of outrage, and yet if you’d told me that this short film was a direct reaction to that incident, I would believe you.  It feels that directly connected.

  So now here we are… it’s the Monday morning after Spike’s film finally opened, capping off a five year journey to get this thing onscreen.  And Kanye’s still trying to recover some sort of public standing after making himself look like a drunken ass who picked on a little girl on the best night of her life.

• Screen Junkies would like to see this further developed into a feature:
  

  Yeah, like we said, pretty weird. I’d like to see Spike Jonze revisit themes in Adaptation and do a film in which Kanye starts to interrupt himself, and then find out that his entire life was actually the daydream of an autistic child staring at a snow globe. That autistic child’s name? Kanye West.

• Vadim Rizov at IFC’s The Independent Eye thinks the weird stuff is kinda stupid, but he does see worth in the film overall:
  

  It does make for a neat companion piece to “Where The Wild Things Are,” a parallel tale of an infantile man-boy who acts out, despairs, purges himself of those negative feelings and learns to control them. It’s about as “adult” as Jonze’s work gets — the sex, the clubbing — yet that regressive aesthetic is in full force.

  Better, “We Were Once A Fairytale” really clarifies who Jonze is, besides a talented technician with an imagination. He’s a kid who relates to other kids who never learned to process their emotions in a sophisticated way, no matter what age they are. That’s something that holds as true for “Jackass” (which Jonze co-created) as it does for the hyper-articulate, despairing protagonists of “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation.”

• Mr. Atoz at Agent Bedhead is disappointed with the ending:
  

  A capsule review: Kanye turns out to have a real gift for playing a drunken, overbearing lout, and we can expect to see him exploring this persona in future public appearances. Moreover, any movie that shows Kanye hacking himself open with a bowie knife gets an automatic four stars in my book. Unfortunately (SPOILER ALERT!), the movie ends on a thoroughly downbeat note: Kanye survives the experience.

• Jessica Barnes at Cinematical is primarily impressed with Jonze’s work here:
  

  Hopefully the success of Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are this weekend means we will be seeing more from the director this year, because this short reminds us that there’s nobody that makes movies like Jonze — not to mention that he does the impossible with this short: he makes Kanye West seem almost human.

• Adam K. Raymond at Vulture is also disappointed with parts but likes it overall:
  

  It drags in the middle and the metaphor is a little obvious, but all in all this video was probably worth the wait. (It helps that no one was actually waiting.) Plus, the special effects are awesome.

• Vince Mancini at FilmDrunk compares it to another “real” short:
  

  The whole thing has Spike Jonze’s funk all over it and that alone makes it a compelling watch.  Then at about the nine-minute mark, I don’t want to be a party-pooper mcsurprise ruiner, but suffice to say, Sh-t. Gets. Real.  It kind of reminds me of another awesome short film I posted a while ago, Rabbit.  Bottom line, prepare for face melting.

• Devin Faraci at CHUD.com sees this as more related to music videos than to “real” short films:
  

  Called We Were Once A Fairytale, the ten minute short (with some mildly NSFW moments) seems to begin like one of those arty 90s music videos - you know, where the music takes a back seat to the dialogue and story - and then really becomes one of those arty 90s music videos - you know, the ones you can only see on The Director’s Series DVDs, and that played on MTV one time, as part of the ‘Making Of’ special about the video that MTV would never play.

• Gabe at Videogum points to why it seems like one of those “artsy music videos” after comparing the film to a recent feature film:
  

  It’s basically his The Wrestler. His entire life has led up to this one perfect role.

  Supposedly, the shoot began as a music video shoot, but then I guess they got too much great footage of Kanye seeming really drunk and belligerent so they decided to turn it into a short film. Cue puppet magic! (That would also explain why the audio is kind of terrible on this thing.)

Now, watch the film: