Anomalisa **** (2015, voices of David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan) – Movie Review

‘Look for what is special about each individual, focus on that.’ Michael Stone. – Anomalisa is a most brilliantly clever and quirky animation by Charlie Kaufman, based on his play, done with love and a lot of heart and soul. The most brilliant thing about it, perhaps, is that there is no need for it to be an animation – but it is! The stop-motion freeze-frame animation is real cool but it’s the characters, themes and story that count.

David Thewlis invests a lot of morose character into his vocals as Michael Stone, a depressed, bored author specialising in customer service, who leaves Manchester, England, on a business trip to America. Staying at an expensive but characterless hotel, he meets up for a drink with an old flame and then meets a couple of local women.

He picks out one of them to come up to his room – the quirky Lisa (voice of Jennifer Jason Leigh), whom he calls an anomaly (Anomalisa) and this extraordinary stranger brings him back to life again. We come to know and grow fond of these two anomalist characters. We see ourselves in them, possibly, and certainly wish them well.

Thanks to its frank love-making sequence of the one-night stand sex in the hotel room, it has the honour of being the first R-rated animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Mmm, cartoon characters bonking, well, really!

Kaufman wrote the play as Francis Fregoli and he directs the film with Duke Johnson. Tom Noonan performs all the other voices.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review 

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