Storm

Although I am not a big fan of Tim Minchin, when he is at his best he can be very funny and clever and I do recall seeing this enjoyable and barbed bit of beat poetry in one of his shows before. Here we have it made into an animated short film. The narrative sees Tim at a dinner party with some friends and a guest he doesn't know; the girl seems to have a fairy tattoo on her lower back and a new-age name, but he resists the urge to pigeonhole her just on this. However, when she starts stating that nobody can really know anything and that modern medicine is just a big ruse by the capitalists in control to addict us to pointless drugs rather than using alternative medicines, he finds it increasingly hard to bite his tongue.

The main appeal here is the audio delight of Minchin's poem which is both smart but also funny. It deals with a sort of person who we all know – the type who lives in the absolute extreme of opinion, it can be about many things but generally they will be people as inflexible in their opinions as they are extreme. In this example it is a new aged type who finds it easier to believe in homoeopathy than in the power of pills prescribed by a doctor; again we all know this type of person and they do tend to be as frustratingly clichéd as Storm is shown to be here. I once worked with a white woman with dreads who was a vegan and cycled everywhere and believed that any motorist who was involved in a RTA that ended with a cyclist dying should be found guilty of murder no matter what the circumstances – and this was one of the less extreme of her stances. Anyway, across the course of 8 minutes, Tim reaches the point he cannot let things go unanswered anymore and decides to burst her bubble of pomposity with a defence of science and fact.

Lyrically it is very smart and very funny, although I knew this already. What I wondered though was whether the translation into an animated experience would add much – and it does. Although it was fun when he performed it live, it is added to by the animation which flows between characters, words on screen and the visualization of the points being made. It looks cartoony but fun and it made it enjoyable to watch. For sure if your views on life lean heavily towards alternative treatments, alternative religion and "reject the majority opinion on everything" then you'll hate it – but only because you are the target and the short is hitting the bullseye pretty squarely in a way that is smart and funny.

A man and his wife attended a dinner party and are introduced to a young female dinner guest called Storm who believes modern day medicine is in fact a myth and that alternative medicines are far more healthy and effective

This is an animated short film that has Tim Minchin narrating the on screen action as a poem . What made me seek out this short was that it has a " Thanks to Rebecca Watson " credit . Rebecca Watson if you didn't know is someone who has recently been hijacking the new atheist movement with her barely disguised agenda of feminism . It's not the feminism that condemns the violent misogynistic physical attacks on women in the third world but more to do with the misogynistic attitude of speaking to women in elevators and if you look up " Rebecca Watson Elevatorgate " you get a whole new meaning to storm in a tea cup . Watson has also been very critical of Bill Maher's very public statement that he doesn't believe in the benefits of modern day medicine . Hmmmm . Can you see what the agenda of this animated short might be

My own scientific credentials begin and end with O grade biology so I'm not a scientist by trade and STORM points out that because of modern day medicine human beings live twice as long as they did in the long distant past , but is this simply down to medicine ? I've also got O grade history and do remember reading that at the start of the industrial revolution some parts of Britain saw an average life expectancy of seventeen years old . This doesn't mean that if you were twenty years old you had white hair and walked with a cane it meant that many many people died before they reached their fifth birthday . The reason so many people died back then is because they didn't have access to clean water and medicine had nothing to do with it .People also tend to live longer in 2013 because less people smoke and doctors and the scientific community now believe that the average human life span will now actually decrease because of morbid obesity in the Western world . Science can point out that smokers and the obese live shorter lives and medicine can't save people from themselves , at the end of the day if you're killing yourself through your own life style there's little medicine can do for you

This is a pity that medicine and science are used euphemistically in this context because it is a striking short film and when ever I watch a short film I often wonder how the makers are going to do something out of the ordinary and STORM is an extraordinary short film . The animation is good , the rhythmic poetry is good but because the short is giving out a message that is inaccurate then it fails on that score

Absolutely brilliant skewering of people who lack critical thinking skills and who believe in "alternative" treatments.

My favorite quote was him schooling her on, "Science adjusts its views, based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation, so that belief can be preserved."

That's really all I had to say but IMDb has a minimum length. So I'll just reiterate that I think everyone should see this. Either because they have to deal with people like this, or because they may be like Storm.

After watching this I have been trying to track down everything Tim has made because I really enjoy his sense of humor and skewering of pomposity.

Such an amazing ten minutes of my life that I watched this on YT. Pure magnificence and I am overwhelmed with Minchin's way of using slapstick to show us what reality is.

A competition between religion and science - never have I seen a wonderful depiction where there are proofs and not just faiths. Storm talks about how we have all become dependent to the technology and DO NOT star gaze. Much like most of us don;t know why Pluto isn't a planet anymore, the need to Google everything has become a trend which is a negativity.

The narration is musical with drums playing, the characters already having enough depth and a creative take on the new era. Wonderful!

Storm inspires us to think and like Hemingway said, if we think - we are atheists. A great short film - must watch even if you are a non-atheist.