'Bunnyhood' by Mansi Maheshwari Film Review: Animated Appendicitis in Action

The coming-of-age (or coming-out-of-appendicitis) animation short film by Mansi Maheshwari manages to have its bunny and eat it too. Produced as a student film at the NFTS, and premiered (in 2024) at the Cannes Film Festival (Cinef selection),  shows no qualms in putting the relationship between a mother and a daughter at the table tennis field (or the hospital bed) - and actively meditate about lying and truth in the process.

A stomach pain makes the game-playing, heavy-metal fan Bobby (voiced by Mansi Maheshwari herself) stop the game and go to her room. Still hungry, she's looking for dinner. Yet her worried mother has other plans; some quick calls and a story about the favorite junk food trick Bobby into a hospital visit. (Spoiler alert) Her appendicitis will be the victim of this process.

With a Phil Mulloy energy and design style, and an overwhelmingly shaky image, 'Bunnyhood' feels like horror bunnies have suddenly entered your living room -and are waiting for your turn to take in. Their personalization is wittingly left to occur at crucial moments of the film (the hospital, all-observing scene is one of the best in the film), while the mom taking in turn the role of the rabbit is the most dramatic realization and moment here.

'Bunnyhood' is a story of growing up in a world where lies become a useful tool in communicating awkward situations to the ones involved. If the film were done as a straight drama, it would have been heartbreaking; as a dark comedy with its animalistic moments, this story of child abuse can even be bittersweet and entertaining. It is like Marjane in 'Persepolis' found herself in the hands of the moral police (for her own good).

With appendicitis in color (as the lost, innocent consciousness) and its superhuman powers of telling the past, we get to a realization, soothing moment -helped by the sound design (whose anarchic, varied character is incidentally one of the reasons for the film's eventual success).

Your usual 'lessons to be learned' story takes a very wicked, frenetic, and almost Kafkaesque turn in 'Bunnyhood' - and is still very relevant to our experience. A little bit more distorted and angular perhaps -yet the messily drawn world perfectly reflects our very neurotic relation with family, truth, and lies. A quintessential animation short.

Watch 'Bunnyhood' (mature audiences):

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