.jpg)
Directed by Tatia Rosenthal
The meaning of life is a quandary that many filmmakers have explored but, only promising to give the audience slightly less that $10 worth of insight, Tatia Rosenthal’s stop motion animation is one of the most entertaining I’ve seen. Actually, apart from the botoxy lips, the silicon characters are surprisingly real. The person next to me at the preview screening had misgivings about the full frontal nudity and sex scenes and I had to remind her that the characters weren’t actually people. But at the beginning of the film, we did all care when the angel blew his brains out. Hold on a minute … angels aren’t real either.
The drama centres on characters that inhabit an inner city apartment block. In this urban fairy tale, Dave Peck (voiced by Anthony LaPaglia) is unemployed and still lives at home. After purchasing a full glossy book on the meaning of life, he decides to share his knowledge with some of the others, but they are all too preoccupied with their own pursuits of happiness. Ron (voiced by Joel Edgerton), for example, is escaping his fiancé’s demands by indulging in copious amounts of alcohol and partying with a group of miniature people.
Elsewhere in the building, an abusive angel (voiced by Geoffrey Rush) has found a soft place to land, a young boy is saving for a new toy and a magician in debt is having his furniture repossessed. One of the repossessors is Dave’s brother Lenny (voiced by Ben Mendelsohn), and when he spies the bewitching supermodel moving into the building’s penthouse that’s when things start to heat up. Liking her men extra smooth and having a furniture fetish, the supermodel Tanita (voiced by Leeanna Walsman) is an unforgettable character in an unforgettable film about hope in a fragmented world.
***
