George Plympton's MUTANT ALIENS

Review by Dennis D. McDonald

I saw this on the Sundance channel, so I didn’t get a chance to see any DVD extras. Still, that’s quite enough. As a great fan of animation I love Plympton’s quirky, jiggly style, and his lewd, schoolboy humor sometimes transcends its frequently sophomoric origins. (Really, how many visual representations of an erection can you think of?)

The “story”: an astronaut returns after 20 years in space accompanied by aliens with which he has been having intimate relations. He is re-united with his daughter, Chaos ensues. Surrounding this are sight gags, weak attempts at social and political satire, and lots of onscreen sexandviolence. Parts are boring, other parts are laugh-out-loud funny, and parts are embarrassingly juvenile. My guess is that this feature length film could have been edited down to about half its length without sacrificing anything.

Still, it is highly entertaining to see someone produce such an original work that appears to reflect such a warped view of the world. Plympton is unique, even if so much of what he puts on screen is puerile, stupid, and rude. Perhaps you just need to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy this sort of thing.

Review copyright (c) 2004 by Dennis D. McDonald