The Animation Show Volume 3

2007 animation compilation

Rating: 12/20

Plot: Volume three of Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt's cavalcade of innovative and creative animators.

Well, it starts with Beavis and Butthead. I ain't a fan. Things really get started with "Rabbit," a clever little rape of nostalgia that is a very good looking dark comedic fable. It's worth finding on your Internet. "City Paradise" is an ultra-modern clunker. "Everything Will Be Ok" is my favorite Hertzfeldt piece ever, which is probably saying much at all, but this very dark offering of stick figure chaos and no-budget surrealism works. It's funny and unnerving. "Collision" is a kaleidoscopic minimalism that looks like somebody's screen saver. "Astronauts" features homoerotic computer animated space travellers and seems like a one-tone joke that frustratingly lacks a punchline. Bill Plympton has two pieces in the compilation, one very typical that I imagine his fans would like and one that is a little more adventurous--a sleepy noirish tale that is almost really good. "Carlitopolis" combines live action with computer animation in a way that could have been cool, but it looked like an exercise, like showing off. "No Room for Gerald" is the animated equivalent of the dogs playing poker painting, and "One D" doesn't work from the get-go as (I assume) something that is supposed to be funny. I hated a short called "Tyger" even though it had a pretty cool mishmash of styles including a puppet. "Versus" was almost good while "Learn Self Defense" completely lacked humor. There's a nifty existential love story called "Abigail" that takes place during a plane crash. It's a fun little nightmare. I could barely watch a self-indulgent piece called "Dreams and Desires" before the disc finishes with an homage to 80's video games called "Game Over" by that guy who does stop animation with household items. All in all, some of these things are worth seeing once, a lot of them are not good at all, and a few of them are pretty incredible. There's a nice variety at least.