Review of Mutant Aliens (2002) by David M — 09 Jun 2008

Bill Plympton's Mutant Aliens may just be one of the oddest pieces of American animation I've ever had the pleasure to view. Plympton is a cult artist whose attracted a huge amount of attention due to his unique and bizarre cartoony style, as well as his racey themes and complete inability to view anything as taboo, or at least so it seems.

As a result, his movies fucking rule. Mutant Aliens is the tale of an astronaut, sent to space and betrayed by his country in order to rally more funding for the space department. He returns to Earth some years later, telling a fantastic story about his experiences on a planet filled with human organs walking around, but it turns out that isn't the full truth.

The plot is bizarre and completely ridiculous, but you can't fault Plympton for his writing skills. The movie progresses in a captivating fashion, giving us a great balance of suspense and investment in this completely bizarre tale.

An homage to classic monster B-movies, Mutant Aliens is certainly full of gratuituous sexuality and over the top violence, accentuated by Plympton's choppy animation style, which reminds us constantly of his independent investment in his films.

It really does feel like Plympton has drawn every frame of this feature himself, with no help at all. By the time we figure out what is going on, we're getting a little sick of everything though. The scenes start to drag out, and the inconsistancies of the frames start to wear on us when we're left with nothing but a bit of boring plot advancement to captivate us.

But the craziness comes back, and at the end of the film, we are pretty satisfied that what we've just seen is probably pretty god damn fucked up.