I love the message of the story, especially the bell that can be still heard by the narrator but not by his family. My children and I were talking about that the other night.
The computer animation, though, has always unsettled me a bit--I think it has to do with something called "the uncanny valley," a way psychologists measure our response to animation and artificial faces. The uncanny valley, I think, refers to the frequency of eye blinks there are in certain animations. There is a range where the frequency apparently makes people generally more uncomfortable than comfortable. Weird science!
