Britannia
★ 6.0•1993-03-10•5 min
The history of empire. A British bulldog answers his mistress's call. He tacks down the Union Jack to cover the British Isles, then begins playing with a small ball that's the world. At first it's innocent play. The dog discovers tea in India; then, the dog shakes gold out of Africa. Gradually, innocence gives way to more and more ferocious play with the ball. We see terrorized women and children as the dog becomes an enslaving potentate. Harmless English archetypes benefit from colonial riches. Then the world begins to grow, and the dog changes too, from bulldog to effete lap dog.
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CinemaSerf
TMDB User•Nov 15, 2025
★ 7
Using a quickly paced, sketch style of pencil drawing, this rather entertainingly presents us with a potted history of the rise and fall of the British Empire. Using the traditional bulldog as the purveyor of the story, we start off relatively benignly as tea comes from the Indian Raj, then Africa provides great wealth. That munificence gradually turns to more malevolence, though, as religiosity and militarism kicks in and then gradually our fearlessly crowned pooch becomes more like a manicured lapdog poodle, and those who were previously the colonised end up doing some colonising of their own, only on way less invasive terms. It’s jauntily scored with excerpts from “Rule Britannia” cut into a quirky animation that asks a few questions before it’s story sort of comes full circle. Well worth five minutes.
