'Genre' is Don Hertzfeldt's second film, and, in my opinion, is much better than his first. 'Genre' is a simple film w/a simple premise that makes plenty of room for many gags of various kinds, ranging from meta humour to simple genre parody to pure absurdity to more dark and twisted black humour. It's a quick little work of animated comedy that is exceedingly fun to watch and foreshadows the brilliance and hilarity that would soon come to be in films like 'Rejection'.

"Genre" has the markings of a student film, but that's only because it feels experimental; and that's mostly in the stop-motion opening. Regardless, it's a creative mix of animation and real life (more Monty Python than "Mary Poppins") but the real trick is in how Don Hertzfeldt brings his creation to life. The main bunny protagonist (I think it's a bunny) develops a real personality in such a short time, and his anguish at the hands of his animator is hysterical.Maybe it's just that I get his sense of humor (thus far, at least) or that I admire the invention involved in such an early effort, but the man deserves my respect.7/10

Tummy-aching funny! The rabbit gets all of my sympathies, getting his ears ripped off, being fed Ebola carrots, abducted by little green aliens, etc... Don Hertzfeld's cartoons are so anarchistically (if there is such a word) funny that they can only be compared to someone like Tex Avery or Bill Plympton. There's a rabbit that has to go through a series of film genres, from romantic film to porno film etc.. and when the drawer runs out of imagination, he makes up his own genres, like sci-fi musical or porno disaster film... which the rabbit has to endure.If you watch this one, you must also see his "Ah, L'Amour" (absolutely hilarious, a guy innocently asks women for a date or not even that, just how are they doing, and gets flayed, chainsawed, stabbed in the eyeballs,etc), "Lily and Jim", and "Rejected"."Lily and Jim" is about a blind date gone horribly wrong... "Rejected" is supposed to contain some commercials that were commissioned by some companies from Don Hertzfeldt but rejected at sight..:D Which is not true, it's a fictional film, but very funny as such:D. "I live in a bucket!"

Although I shudder to think what this says about me, I love this short! In my own defense, let me also state that I loved The Man Who Planted Trees (what that apparent dichotomy says, who knows? Who cares?) and I'm a prince of a fellow currently in frog mode. But I digress.A poor rabbit finds himself trapped in a situation that would reduce Franz Kafka to one gigantic twitch and takes the viewer down a rabbit hole that would send Lewis Carroll out of the room, screaming incoherently as he ran. Why this didn't get nominated for an Oscar (even a student nomination) I'll never understand. A must for any fan of films, particularly the demented ones (the films, I mean, not the fans) and well worth tracking down. I found it on a Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation and I believe it's to be released (tentatively, anyway) sometime next year by the animator as part of a compilation of all his animated shorts. Most highly recommended!