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The Glassworker Movie Review

The Glassworker is a 2024 Pakistani animated drama film directed by Usman Riaz. It’s a solidly made, but very flawed effort.

Vincent and his father, Tomas, run the best glassworks in the country, but the onset of war turns their lives upside down. Vincent falls in love with Alliz, the daughter of a colonel, and they both must find the courage to confront their fathers. This is the first ever hand-drawn animated film made in Pakistan, which makes it a monumental achievement for the country. I was excited to see it, but the end product was overall quite disappointing.

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The movie suffers from that usual problem of a country that enters the animation arena for the first time and that is indecisiveness. They clearly wanted to mimic Japanese animation with the style of Hayao Miyazaki being an obvious, strong influence on it. But they also included some Western elements, including a lot of British charm, character names etc. The result is a mish-mash of ideas that didn’t quite work.

It also shows us that mimicking Miyazaki is not an easy feat whatsoever. He has a very distinct storytelling and animation style that is not easy to execute. The characterization was especially weak here with only Vincent getting some development while the others were all uninspired and underdeveloped. I watched the English dubbed version and that acting was very mediocre and amateurish.

The Glassworker has that slice-of-life element to its story that worked initially, but eventually it grew tiresome as I simply did not care enough for the characters or their profession to be properly invested in this story. More should have been done in terms of world building and attention to detail. I also found the anti-war story rather familiar and the fact that everything is fictional took away from the authenticity of the entire story.

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But my main issue is that this movie simply isn’t Pakistani in story, characters or any elements whatsoever. I would have liked to have seen an authentic Pakistani production, but what I got was a Japanese story, anime style animation and Western character names. It was a letdown. As for those visuals, the movie looks fine. I liked how well the setting was brought to life, but the overall look of the movie is overly traditional and not modern enough in details and colors. The score is pretty good, though, and so is the sound.