Tweet

Phillip Seymour Hoffman leads the voice cast for this Australian claymation feature charting the path of two extremely unlikely pen pals. Mike McCahill enters a world like no other.

These are extraordinary times for animation, and to the recent outstanding likes of Toy Story 3, The Illusionist and A Town Called Panic we can now add this singular claymation from Adam Elliot, which recounts the tale of a 25-year friendship conducted almost entirely through the post.

For Mary Dinkle (voiced by Toni Collette), a bullied pre-teen in drab 1970s Australia, this communication sparks a growing curiosity about what lies over the horizon. For Max Horowitz (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the fortysomething Brooklynite who becomes Mary’s unlikely penpal, it’s a way of ordering an otherwise terrifying world.

To Max’s Asperger’s, the film adds alienation, agoraphobia, depression and the demise of several goldfish – yet the plasticine makes all this malleable; it’s not an issue movie, but a vivid, affecting character study for the over-12s.

As our two outsiders discover they may just be too different for their correspondence to be entirely pain-free, Elliot miraculously avoids narrative predictability, sentimentality and political correctness – while the considerable vocal talent hits the right tenor of hurt and humanity

 

Mike McCahill on 6th December 2010
View all 164 of Mike McCahill's reviews