Drawing on Pixar’s Ratatouille, Kwan and Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, and 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, cantankerous crustacean 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, of course, is 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 crustacean. 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 a creative, beautifully staged, sharp, surreal puppet-led short that I’m sure the late, great Jim Henson would have loved. Drawing on Pixar’s Ratatouille, Kwan and Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, and 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 you also find a clever, fascinating exploration of the experiences of undocumented workers, who often find themselves controlled and manipulated by unscrupulous employers.
Speaking ahead of the film’s YouTube premiere, Dylan Pun said, “Making the film was as fun as it was challenging. This was my first time working with puppets. I quickly learned that puppets have many physical limitations, and that shooting the film as a mockumentary with a handheld camera approach worked against making the puppets look good. The constantly moving camera made it challenging for our puppeteers to know where the boundaries of the frame were; they needed to hide out of view, and it took some choreography between the camera and the puppeteers to make it all work”.
Dylan continued, “I think there are a lot of great films out there that tackle very serious topics in a nuanced and methodical way. Shrimp Fried Rice is not one of those films. By making people laugh, I hope the message is easier to digest, and I think that’s important. We’re still working with a serious issue that affects many people, especially in the US but also here in Canada. The absurd premise of the film draws you in and hopefully catches you off guard with its moments of seriousness.”
Many directors would have opted for animation in bringing The Shrimp’s kitchen nightmare to life. Still, 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 is now streaming on YouTube.
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