Movie Review: Preheated

Preheated is a CGBros animated short film, made by Luke Snedecor, a digital artist, and Sarah Heinz, a production coordinator at DreamWorks Animation. It was uploaded to CGMeetup on YouTube.com on May 24, 2019, and follows the story of a young boy trying to make a birthday cake.

It starts with a young and innocent brown-haired little boy making a birthday card for his father. It looks like something a five-year-old would conjure up and genuinely be proud of, so I'm guessing he's around that age. We hear a loud "boom" from what looks to be a basement, and out walks the kid's father. He's all upset over another failed experiment and walks right past his son who's trying to hand him the card. Some of the comments noted how the kid should have said something, but remembering how I was like at five-years-old, I completely understand why he didn't. His dad was sad and he most likely didn't want to bother him. But at the same time, it still hurt to be ignored like that. He watches his father put the Erlenmeyer flask up on top of a cabinet and watches him walk away. Which--why would you put your failures on an unprotected shelf, unsealed by the way, for them to just sit and wait to be knocked over? A basic rule of scientific experimenting is to properly discard any and all waste materials. Honestly.
The brown-haired boy, determined to cheer his father up, decides to bake him a birthday cake. Imagine, he's quite literally developed a sort of superpower and decides to just casually make a cake. Also, the kid of a scientist doesn't know that if any of his fathers' experimental chemicals spill--especially if they spill on him--he needs to call his father immediately. How are you just going to leave your failed toxic experiments out and not teach your kid this? The dad's dumb. The kid's dumb. Well, I'll give him this: he's smart for a five-year-old who wasn't taught basic scientific experimenting safety precautions. He makes an effort to overcome his issue. From oven mitts to tongs, he desperately tries and eventually succeeds to bake a cake.
Finally, his father walks in, dumbfounded. He looks around, then looks at his kid. His face is completely blank for a minute as he takes time to process what his son was trying to accomplish. Finally, his face softens and he reaches out to help his son while he's struggling with topping the cake with candles. The two have a moment and they light the candles and smile as the short ends.

Okay, this is cute and all but when is that kid going to the hospital? Cause like, that's where it ends. Oh, look at that, they have credit pictures that give us glimpses into what happened after the short ended. We get four pictures. One is of the father pouring a blue liquid onto his son's hands. One the boy looking at his now glowing blue hands. One of the two of them having a small toast, with the boy's drink frozen over in his hands. And one with the kid fumbling with some white frozen food, most likely the drink from the toast, stuck to his hand and glass, because you know, when glass freezes to your skin it sticks.
So instead of seeking professional help, the dad just whipped up the exact opposite of the original serum to give to his kid. Now the kid's the next Elsa. And, seeing as they're wearing the same outfits in all the credits' pictures, this happened on the same day. Sigh.

I'm not the only one lost by the lack of realism in the story. Several comments on the video are raging about how abruptly the short ends and how it fails to address the kid's crisis. Don't get me wrong, the theme is adorable. The animation matches the feel of it and once you ignore the blaring issues, it's an enjoyable short film. Definitely memorable for me, and it stands out a bit from the other short films I've watched. So, good animation, just a bit...iffy.