It's Such a Beautiful Day

2012 cartoon

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A stick figure named Bill's mental problems make his life a little magical.

If I told you that this is 62 minutes of narration--by Hertzfeldt himself--and animation that really does just consist of line drawings that doesn't really seem all that more advanced than the flip-book where a pantsless guy hip-thrusted for about 65 pages before exploding in a bunch of scribbles, you would probably decide not to watch this. So I won't tell you that because you should definitely watch this. Initially, I was a little put off by the lack of structure although the non sequiturs made me smile or even laugh, but there's a moment when time collapses, where past and future and present all bleed into one, and where you realize that you're watching the mundane life of a bloated stick figure pass before your eyes where it all strangely comes together. Splashes of color, shocking sound effects, split-screens (sort of), and psychedelic backgrounds give this an avant-garde flavor and keep things unpredictable and fun. Well, as fun as something that's about as psychologically intense as a flip-book can get. Bill's tale isn't happy at all, but Hertzfeldt's got this ability to make it all so funny. The humor's random; the surrealism's rampant. Hertzfeldt's work was featured in The Animation Show compilations that I watched a few years ago, and I wasn't sure how his stuff would work in a full-length feature (well, 62 minutes). I was enormously entertained by the whole thing and even slightly moved and really didn't want it to end.

And I learned something! You want to avoid fruit in supermarkets that are at crotch level.