Anomalisa
Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2016 11:10 am
Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa won almost universal critical plaudits - but I didn't like it. It's clever, it's well done and it raises the bar on stop-motion animation to new, almost unimaginable heights - but for me that's where it ends.
The story is bleak, the characters dull or unlikely to engage much sympathy and the ending goes nowhere. Stone's obvious nervous breakdown does not engage our normal response of empathy for his plight, because he just isn't nice enough to warrant it. (Anoma)Lisa is somewhat more engaging, but she is irritatingly dimb and more interested in her own ......interests........than the family she is prepared for Stone to betray and leave to her benefit. Yes - the characters are all very human, but we know what life is like already. The trick of a good director is not only to hold a mirror up to life - we can all do that - but to pull something different out of the hat, and this Kaufman singularly fails to do.
The story is bleak, the characters dull or unlikely to engage much sympathy and the ending goes nowhere. Stone's obvious nervous breakdown does not engage our normal response of empathy for his plight, because he just isn't nice enough to warrant it. (Anoma)Lisa is somewhat more engaging, but she is irritatingly dimb and more interested in her own ......interests........than the family she is prepared for Stone to betray and leave to her benefit. Yes - the characters are all very human, but we know what life is like already. The trick of a good director is not only to hold a mirror up to life - we can all do that - but to pull something different out of the hat, and this Kaufman singularly fails to do.
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