"dumb and flat"? Maybe it's just the fact that I have a 5 year old and a 3 year old, so I've become somewhat of a connoisseur of animated shorts, but I've actually been fairly amazed with the quality of most of the animated shorts. With no real dialogue to speak of, there is an awful lot of humor packed into these, and the voice acting combined with the animation in some of the shorts is pretty damn impressive, often conveying a surprising amount of emotion and expressiveness that I would not have expected.

I'll give you dumb possibly, but flat? Watch a good number of them again and see if you still say that.