davidehrlich’s review published on Letterboxd:
Any number of superlatives have been hurled at Don Hertzfeldt’s “World of Tomorrow” — this critic listed the 16-minute short as one of the 10 greatest films of the 21st Century — but perhaps the highest compliment it’s received is that nobody ever really asked for a sequel. Well, maybe that’s not true, maybe Hertzfeldt has actually spent the last two years being hounded by fans who wanted more of a movie they loved, but I’ve watched the original more times than is medically advisable, and the thought never occurred to me.
That’s because “World of Tomorrow” is a truly perfect thing, an immaculate eruption of ideas that’s contained within a closed loop of continuous delight (click here to rent it right now). Conceived as an excuse for Hertzfeldt to teach himself the basics of digital animation, written around unscripted recordings of his four-year-old niece, and ultimately nominated for (and robbed of) an Oscar, the short tells the story of an oblivious little girl named Emily Prime who’s visited by a time-traveling adult clone of herself and spirited away on a whirlwind tour of our species’ mordantly hilarious future.