Cracker Bag is a 2003 short film (15 minutes) from Australia, directed by Glendyn Ivin.
A bespectacled pre-teen girl named Eddie lives somewhere in Australia with her mother and older brother in 1980. Her parents are either separated or divorced and Eddie plainly misses her dad. Meanwhile, "Cracker Night" (the Australian version of Guy Fawkes Night
) is approaching. As the date grows near, Eddie scrounges up fireworks for a family celebration, while hoping that her father will attend.
Tropes:
- Bittersweet Ending: Eddie's dad doesn't join them to shoot off fireworks. Worse, while running away from her first rocket Eddie accidentally knocks it over, and it shoots right into the cracker bag she left on the ground, setting off all her fireworks at once. But she still gets to watch other people's fireworks on the way home and she smiles wanly at the camera as the film ends.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Eddie, who has been looking out the window of her mom's car at the neighborhood fireworks, looks straight at the camera right before the final Smash to Black and end credits.
- Disappeared Dad: Eddie's parents are either separated or divorced. Her mom tries to get her father to come for Cracker Night, but he doesn't.
- Flipping the Bird: Eddie's older brother David flips her off at dinner.
- Guile Hero: Eddie collects aluminum cans for recycling, so she can get money to buy fireworks. She's paid by weight, so to get more money for her cans, she fills them with pebbles before smashing them.
- Idiot Ball: Well, look, she's a little girl, give her a break. But really, leaving her whole cracker bag stash of fireworks in the middle of the field in close proximity to her first rocket, instead of taking the bag with her, was not a good idea.
- Slice of Life: A bittersweet story about a young girl, a child of divorce, gathering fireworks for Cracker Night and hoping her dad will come to the celebration. (In Real Life use of fireworks by unlicensed people was banned around this time, making family Cracker Night celebrations a thing of the past, and the holiday declined in popularity.)
- Visual Title Drop: Eddie is so excited about the fireworks that she stencils "CRACKER BAG" on the burlap sack that her mother made for her to carry her fireworks.
