Minimus

Those that are about to die salute you – except that is, for Minimus, who is far too weedy to even take his chances out there if he can avoid it. While he waits with much stronger men dying all around him, he becomes increasingly sure he cannot possibly get called.

This amusing little short film is set in the waiting area immediately outside the combat floor of a Roman Colosseum where we see a bunch of very large men all wearing the traditional masks and weaponry of gladiators. Amongst them is the noticeably paler and weedier Minimus and we mostly stay with him through the film as he watches bigger men leave the area and return mere seconds late in pieces on a wagon. The physical appearance of the main character is itself part of the joke and it is a pleasing image but perhaps not enough to really carry it through the whole way. The majority of the short plays with the joke of the others dying very quickly and it is only in the final minute that it does something different and then ends on a quite funny little song.

The tone throughout is amusing and I quite liked the light touch, but it badly needed just a few more specific laughs or moments in there to really top it off. The comic playing of Brown helps it a lot and to be fair Hopkins does a good job to shoot within a set that is convincing and has plenty of good supporting roles and costumes, but it needed a few more laughs on top to really make it work.