Eye For Film >> Movies >> The Great Breakfast Race (2004) Film Review
Inside the head of a lonely boy, the world is an odd, threatening, incomprehensible place.
The day begins violently with the aural attack of The Alarm Clock. From now until the bus ride to school, it's rushrushrushrush.
Breakfast is a bowl of cereal, wolfed down in seconds, exciting the caged gerbil so much that it breaks its exercise wheel. Where's mum? Where's anyone? The fish in the fishtank circles silently.
The bus ride is a moment of window-gaze-gaming. The green, empty, bland fields look more comforting than the fear he feels for what is about to happen - skool!
Teachers shout at him; corridors are dark, like night alleys in dreamtime; lessons are words, flung at defenceless children; many minds are wounded.
He stares into space, thinking, "If I could fly..." And turns into an animated boy, with a red balloon.
Mark Ash's film is filled with quirky, imaginitive detail, like the bright primary colours of the early morning kitchen and the rushing sewage sounds that fill the air before a teacher clubs it shut with verbal abuse.
Deceptively simple, there is more to this daymare than a brief examination of childhood's dark pain.
Reviewed on: 04 Apr 2004
