Mutant Aliens (US. 2001)

TRAILER HERE

Directed/Written: Bill Plympton

Sometimes sweat covered hard working creative types should be give A +’s and a pat on the back for effort alone. Bill Plympton, animator and cartoonist, is back-pattable in every regard. He’s a genius when it comes to short skits (His “Guard Dog” was nominated for an Oscar) but his feature length narratives shudder when they should jump. It feels like he takes a bunch of good one off gags and makes them overlong, superfluous or fall flat on their face in front of an awkward audience. You’re guaranteed a chuckle every now and then but there’s always piles of crap you have to deal with in between. But then the A + comes into play…

Bill Plympton draws every frame of his films himself. EVERY. SINGLE. FRAME.

Most films are animated at 24 frames a second. Mutant Aliens isn’t quite as smooth with 14 frames of animation per second, but that’s still a massive undertaking for one lone hand. It takes Plympton 2-3 years to finish ONE film and he does it all in his own distinct visual style. I may not have been completely engrossed in the world but at least I was razzle dazzled by it’ s technical accomplishment.

Mutant Aliens story concerns a lost Spaceman’s return to earth with freakish space abominations in tow. Chaos explodes as the Spaceman seeks revenge on the people that made him lost in the first place. The fact that this is aa completely independent production allows it to throw all the extreme gore, nudity and full screen bestiality (No. I’m not kidding) at the unsuspecting audience. It’s all done tongue in cheek, but even then some points made me itch to hit the fast forward button. The wafer thing characters and painfully episodic plot makes a 75 minute running time feel like two hours.

It must be incredibly difficult to get any kind of perspective on something as big as “Mutant Aliens” when you do EVERYTHING yourself. Bill gets the golden sticker but doesn’t get the pass.

Mutant Aliens will be dismissed more then huggibly loved, but it’s still an interesting watch that works more on a “Wow! He did that!” then actually fun experience. For a more audience friendly gateway to the artist's work I'd recommend his still un-released in North Americafilm “Hair High” Or check out his widelely available collection of short film ("Plymptoons") work to see where his real genius lies.


DVD: The hour long documentary is sluggishly paced and filled with awkward asides, but there's a lot of information to be found here for people interested in animation. The commentary is not as excitable as I would have hoped and like above, it's for animation fans only.