Lost & Found

From Bagpuss and The Clangers through to Wallace and Gromit and this bittersweet Australian Academy Award winner, stop-motion animation has a tactile quality that's hard to beat. And you're unlikely to be many moments in to Andrew Goldsmith and Bradley Slabe's Lost And Found before you'll wish you really could reach in and give the knitted dinosaur and fox lovebirds at its heart a helping hand.

Set up in the swiftest manner in a Japanese restaurant - whose full depth will go on to be used to great effect once the action picks up pace - snapshots of the two arm in arm and a couple of blown kisses are all we need to see their dedication. Soon both will be showing just what lengths they will go to in order to protect the other. The film is credited to the Wabi Sabi studios - presumably named after the Japanese philosophy of accepting the imperfect and the transient nature of life. And, while the dinosaur might be far from perfect, we soon learn he's willing to give every fibre of his being to help his friend.

This aspect of the plot, despite ending on a hopeful note, is perhaps on the sad side for young children who might otherwise enjoy the bumbling dinosaur's attempts to do good. Even adults might have to brace themselves, although there is also plenty of comedy to be found in the dinosaur's Indiana Jones-style antics as he tries to help.

If the film partially celebrates an embrace of imperfection, that doesn't extend to the animators' craft, which is flawless. The attention to detail is everywhere, from the retro Polaroid Instamatic camera in the pair's bedroom (separate beds), to the old Nokia phone that splashes up when the dinosaur tumbles into a box of junk. Restaurant chairs look scuffed and lived in and when a character has been drenched it leaves soggy footprints behind it as it walks. Elsewhere, we'll see threads unravelling with balletic grace and even the title credit, with its intertwined strands of brown and green thread, perfectly matches the film's themes. Goldsmith and Slabe don't neglect the character of each of the pair either, so that we are swept up in the emotion of the story as much as the manner of its telling.