Drawing its influences from Pixar’s Ratatouille, Kwan and Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, as well as a plethora of reality TV cooking competitions and internet memes, Dylan Pun’s Shrimp Fried Rice is a scintillating, laugh-a-minute treat.
Many of you may mistakenly believe that the classic Chinese dish of shrimp fried rice dates back to the Sui Dynasty (581-618 CE). It’s an easy mistake to make! In truth, shrimp fried rice was named after its inventor, a creative and cantankerous crustacian chef known simply as ‘The Shrimp’ (Marty Stelnick). I know what you’re thinking: how could a shrimp cook up such a delightful dish with its eight small appendages and only a fan tail for balance in a busy, sweaty kitchen? The answer is, of course, simple. The Shrimp, like many other famous animal chefs, has a human puppet, controlled by sitting on their head and manipulating their hair.
The Shrimp’s human puppet is ‘Dave’ (Jeff Yung), an undocumented Chinese chef who endures The Shrimp’s outbursts and inflated ego for the prestige of working with the consummate crustacian. But ‘Dave’ is about to face a kitchen nightmare when The Shrimp’s hatred of a radical and revered rodent chef with their own human puppet leads to a culinary calamity.
Writer and director Dylan Pun and co-writer Michael Turk invite us into a weird and wacky world in Shrimp Fried Rice, one where the classic mockumentary meets the muppets. It’s the kind of creative, beautifully staged, sharp and surreal puppet-led short that I’m sure the late, great Jim Henson would have loved. Drawing its influences from Pixar’s Ratatouille, Kwan and Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, as well as a plethora of reality TV cooking competitions and internet memes, Shrimp Fried Rice is a scintillating, laugh-a-minute treat. But lift the lid on this colourful short and there is also a clever and fascinating exploration of the experiences of undocumented workers, who often find themselves controlled and manipulated by unscrupulous employers.
Many directors would have opted for animation in bringing The Shrimps’ kitchen nightmare to life, but by choosing puppetry, live action, and mockumentary as the base ingredients, Pun serves up a sizzling, satisfying, scrumptious, and smart short film. All hail The Shrimp and his harried and soon-to-be-free human puppet ‘Dave’.
Shrimp Fried Rice, directed by Dylan Pun, will have its World Premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival on July 28. Ticket Information.
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