Cryptozoo

To watch Cryptozoo is to open a Disneyland-size kingdom of ideas that never cease to astound.

Animation director Jane Samborski’s richly eclectic miscellany of visual styles depict a bestiary of mythic creatures and outré scenes of sex and violence that are matched to director/writer Dash Shaw’s allegorical narrative.

Cryptozoo stands out as an aesthetically ambitious undertaking, seducing viewers with its hypnotizing hand-drawn animation and John Carroll Kirby’s pulsing electronic score.

In every way, Cryptozoo is a more ambitious achievement than Shaw’s coy but pleasing first feature, My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea (2016). And while its hippie-era setting and hallucinatory imagery give a nostalgic kick, the film’s darker conflicts speak to dire issues of today.

Cryptozoo may be overstuffed with ideas, but its central dilemma is a fascinating and poignant message that carries a dazzling animated adventure.

There is a certain charm to Shaw’s deadpan comedy – and I genuinely appreciated what I can only assume was an intentional callback to Michael Cera’s fate in 2013′s This Is the End – but one visit to the Cryptozoo was enough for me.

Though its 60s-inspired, Gilliam-esque animation style is certainly awkward enough to draw the notice of the arthouse and indie crowds, Cryptozoo’s storytelling and themes fail to come up to the complexity of even a middling Pixar effort.

Cryptic and at the same time enigmatic, but it spreads too much, and what apparently seems to be something out of a dream or rather a nightmare, ends up making you sleepy. That's what was happening to me. It lacks focus and a better direction, but it's worth it as a discordant animated film. Especially when it's so difficult to see films in the genre aimed at adults.

Man bad, women good. That's the moral here. This idea that nature is inherently noble and that men (specifically men because all the bad guys are men in this) just don't get it. The reality is, and something feminists and the LGBTQ community fail to grasp, is that nature is not inherently noble, it simply seeks to support its biological imperatives. No other species tries to change its very nature to suit its desires. And nowhere else, but in nature, will you see brutal savagery greeted with calm passivity. Gazelles don't protest against predators. The animation, while interesting, is not great. It looks like something a child drew. I know, I know, Picasso famously said he spent his life learning to draw like a child. He was also a womanizer and a complete misogynist, but I guess we'll overlook that. This is a miss for me.