1993 stop-animated bastardized folk taleRating: 15/20
Plot: The poor Mr. and Mrs. Thumb are thrilled with the arrival of their first son despite his freakishly tiny stature. They name him Tom because they like the alliteration. He's kidnapped and taken to a laboratory where genetically mutated creatures are experimented upon. A skeletal spider-like creature helps Tom escape, and he meets up with a race of elvish beings as large as him. They try to help him reunite with his father.
I sure hope Jan Svankmajer gets royalties from this. This has a similar dirty look, a very similar use of sound effects, and the same surreal texture that really makes Svankmajer so unique. Even the people are pixilated (posed just like the stop-animated puppets) in the same herky-jerky style Svankmajer uses in his work. Sort like Peter Gabriel in that "Sledgehammer" video. Despite the stylistic plagiarism, this is a really cool flick. It's almost entirely dialogue free, and when the characters do talk, the communication is mostly in groans, mumbles, and squelching noises. Combined with some interesting music, the sound effects and people noises (I swear I heard some fart noises) help create the atmosphere. The puppets range from really bland to really cool. The minor characters inhabiting the laboratory are imaginative and Quay-esque, reminding me almost of Syd's creations in Toy Story. Tom (and the other small humanoids) doesn't do much for me though. He's an ugly earless clay thing, sort of like an upright Golem. A bland protagonist isn't a terrible thing though as he's contrasted against the nightmarish, junk-littered wasteland. There are some dark details in the creation of the settings, stuff I'd imagine would make the animation pretty difficult. Every single setting is infested with twitching or hovering insects. Random, odd props (a crucified Santa Claus, rows of hypodermic needles, a guy in a diving suit rummaging through toxic waste) add to the texture. This starts to sag a little bit about the time when Tom meets the elf guy, and for a while this is too reminiscent of fantasy, but it's definitely worth seeing for fans of this sort of twisted stuff. Too bad the "Bolex brothers" don't have any other feature-length films.
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