The animation is pretty bad, and if I recall correctly it doesn't have any sound. OK, at least it's amusing (in the good way) to see balloons so very evil when they are supposed to be fun. I like Don Hertzfeldt's (the same author) "Ah, L'Amour" many times over this.

Ok, how to review this one. Again, it's a case of almost anything I write may spoil it - though not quite so much as was the case with 'Rejected'.

It's a six minute film, and it's won over 30 awards - including some that are actually from places I've heard of. That much I can safely tell you.

In 1998 Don Hertzfeldt had finished making a short called 'Lily and Jim', and tired out, decided he didn't want to have to deal with complicated things like character's lips moving. So 'Billy's Balloon' has no dialogue at all. It also has no music at all. It almost has no artwork at all.

Let's try this approach.

Are you familiar with Edward Gorey, and if so, do you like his work? If yes, then you're going to almost certainly enjoy this short. If no, pass to the next question.

Is your favourite film 'The Rugrats Movie', but you were a bit concerned about the level of violence? If yes, then please God don't watch this short. You will probably need psychotherapy for five years.

There. I've already let on more than perhaps I should, but come on, I'll bet you already had a sense that this wasn't just six minutes of a kid holding a balloon.

The violence is actually not as graphic as you would see in an average episode of 'South Park', or any number of other TV cartoons. Perhaps it's the pairing of violence and such an innocent object. Perhaps it's the sheer relentlessness of it. The comic timing really is the strongest point of the film. It's a terribly slow short. You sit there waiting for something to happen, thinking maybe it won't, maybe it won't... but knowing it will, and just... waiting. And then it happens. And then it starts again, but worse.

Please don't get the impression that I am amused by violence for its own sake. Have you seen that show 'Happy Tree Friends'? I hate that. Really hate it. I can't watch it. It's partly that it's just unremitting violence, but it's also because it's just astonishingly un-funny.

Billy's Ballon is really damn funny.

I read a review I really liked, from a film critic who was in the audience at a festival where it was shown. He wrote "It makes no sense and has no redeeming value", and then went on to try to analyse why he was laughing so hard at it that the audience probably thought he was a psycopath.

Warning, in all seriousness, this short has been called 'plain nasty', 'downright spooky', 'contemptible' and 'disturbed', and that's just from the reviews on the filmmaker 's own website. I would advise you to view it yourself before letting your children watch it - though to be honest, I have absolutely no idea what a child would make of this. I can imagine them thinking it was absolutely hilarious, and I can imagine it giving them nightmares.

You can take it though, and you have to see it before you die. As one critic put it, "This thing will win awards until the end of time."