Shop Class

In this animated short, writer/director Hart Snider takes us back to junior high school in the late ’80s for a dark but funny coming-of-age story. Back in the era of the Walkman, Pac-Man, and Wayne Gretzky, Hart finds himself lost amongst his pubescent peers. He lacks the confidence to ask the girl of his dreams out on a date, and he’s just discovered that he’s required to take shop class, when he’d been hoping to register for Home Economics instead.

Hart dreads shop class and his terrifying teacher, Mr. P. Threatened by the school bully, and lectured by Mr. P. on the horrifying consequences of using industrial power tools, Hart wants nothing more than to follow the scent of freshly baked cookies all the way back to that Home Ec. room down the hall.

Try as he might, Hart just can’t succeed in shop. He fails assignment after assignment as Mr. P. continues to break him down. But he perseveres, and discovers a few things about himself along the way.

Shop Class is a film with universal appeal, exploring themes of high-school alienation, old-fashioned gender roles, and becoming comfortable in your own skin. It’s an honest look at growing up, through the filtered lens of a teenager who is no longer a boy but is not quite sure what it means to be a man.