Validation: A short film review

Parking and paying for parking can be a headache. The sooner you find a spot the faster you can pay and leave. But who expects this experience to make you smile? Director and writer Kurt Kuenne gives us just that in the comedic short film Validation.

It begins with a depressed parking patron walking to get his parking ticket validated but receives actual “validation” in the form of compliments and smiles from a parking lot validator Hugh Newman, TJ Thyne. Newman continues to make more and more parking patrons smile with his compliments. But things change when Hugh Newman meets a beautiful unexpected character Victoria played by Vicki Davis. He visits her every day to try and get her to smile, but is unsuccessful. His inability to make her smile with flattering words and honest love sends him into a funk making him unable to do what he does best, make people smile.  Hugh stops validating, and loses his job as parking validator. But things turn around when he picks up a new hobby of taking pictures of couples in the park which leads coincidentally leads him back to the women of his demise.

This short film almost made me cry. You can’t help but to smile throughout the whole film. And there is a contagious song that’s played that is bound to get stuck in your head, just as contagious as the smile you will have when watching this film.