© Nickelodeon.

Medical assistants poke and prod at Max and his dislocated brain. © Nickelodeon.

Great talent and great animation are a cause for celebration, no matter what length, what format, or what venue it is found in. On those rare occasions when great new talent is confirmed, as when The Ren & Stimpy Show debuted and established Nicktoons or The Little Mermaid premiered and set Disney Features on its present course, there is a thrill in the discovery of a fresh vision and a new artist -- and for me, a delightful reminder of why I love animated cartoons in the first place.

For those of us who covet great animation as others might cherish fine wine, Dave Wasson's funny new film Max & His Special Problem will bring a smile to your brain (your lips will be too busy laughing). Your brain will especially relate, as Max's gray matter is the cause of the titular special problem.

Max, a white collar pencil pusher, sneezes away some eraser dust and accidentally blows his brain out of his head. His boss gives him permission to "take care of it," thus the brainless Max begins a citywide adventure, first misplacing his mental organ atop a taxicab and later at a hospital, where the surgeons spend more time adding up his bill than repairing the damage.

A team of doctors try to figure out how toget Max's brain back into his head. © Nickelodeon.

The Studio Mechanism
This short was exec produced by Fred Siebert and Larry Huber for Frederator's Oh Yeah! Cartoons! series on Nickelodeon. Like Siebert's previous "World Premiere Cartoons" (a.k.a. What A Cartoon!) for Cartoon Network, this is a group of creator-driven cartoons in search "the next big thing" in kid's animation. Whereas the previous Hanna-Barbera series was consumed with finding a Ren & Stimpy derivative, this series is focused on kid's point-of-view, as (with a few exceptions) most of the entries star a little boy, a little girl, a cat, a dog, or a robot -- or a combination of those elements.

Though Siebert's Hanna-Barbera experiment yielded a few excellent shorts (Genndy Tartakovsky's Dexter's Laboratory and John R. Dilworth's Oscar-nominated The Chicken From Outer Space first come to mind), and his Nickelodeon project is showing even greater sophistication, it's important to understand that these films are funded by U.S. kids cable networks and not the NFB (National Film Board of Canada) or the U.K.'s Channel 4. That any of these works transcend their intended audience is remarkable and an unexpected benefit.