Attention, all those of you who, like me, have been laboring for years to write good, realistic dialogue: "Bike Ride" is a shining example of glorious prose.

The trick, in this particular case, was to simply record a kid telling his (true) story, with a bit of editing I assume, and shape the film around his narrative.

I love listening to this kid talk: the unforced rhythm of his clipped, short sentences, the strange lyricism of his Minnesotan accent.  It contains a sensibility that would take any trained actor months with a dialect coach to learn. 

On top of this track, the raw material of the story, is constructed a beautiful, flowing, and profoundly simple animated world.  I think Bike Ride is a compelling argument for animation, in fact, as an institution: how else could this story be a film?  You couldn't dramatize it, that wouldn't be much fun. But in Tom Schroeder's endlessly transforming composition, the world of the voice comes vividly to life.