(Bill Plympton, USA, 2004, 35mm, 75 minutes)
Imagine a cross between cartoonish, live-action musical Grease, Finnish show-band crazies the Leningrad Cowboys, and violently twisted video game Stubbs the Zombie, and there you have it: Hair High, the latest full-length blast of looniness from I Married a Strange Person animator Bill Plympton.
Naturally, that analogy, colorful as it may sound, is a mite reductive. Plympton's work is both more surrealistic and more scatological, although this animated feature is set in the 1950s, the rockabilly soundtrack does feature Hasil Adkins, the characters do sport madcap hairstyles, and central couple Cherri and Spud (voiced by Sarah Silverman and Eric Gilliland) do return from the dead just in time to make a "killer" entrance at the prom.
As with other "Plymptoons," Hair High can be pretty gross, as when the wheezy biology teacher (voiced by David Carradine) coughs up a lung--among other organs--and it's the visceral stuff I find least appealing.
As with other "Plymptoons," Hair High can be pretty gross, as when the wheezy biology teacher (voiced by David Carradine) coughs up a lung--among other organs--and it's the visceral stuff I find least appealing.
The surrealistic flights of fancy, on the other hand, are as creative as ever, while the scatological material generates the biggest laughs.
Granted, the jokes can be rather obvious--the Echo Park football team are called the Cocks--but a laugh is a laugh, and I was unable to suppress one when the announcer (actor and voiceover artist Jay O. Sanders) exclaimed, "That Cock is full of spunk!"
Other voice actors include Keith Carradine, Craig Bierko, Beverly D'Angelo, Dermot Mulroney, Tom Noonan, fellow animators Matt Groening and Don Hertzfeldt, and producer Martha Plimpton, Keith Carradine's daughter.
So, Hair High isn't for everyone, but it's packaged with the quite wonderful, thoroughly un-"yucky" animated short Fan and the Flower (narrated by Sideways' Paul Giamatti). Plus, Plympton will be producing an original drawing for each audience member on opening night. Talk about spunk!
Hair High plays Mar 23-29, Thurs-Wed at 7 and 9pm (Sat and Sun at 5pm) at the Northwest Film Forum. The NWFF is located at 1515 12th Ave on Capitol Hill between Pike and Pine. For more information, click here or call (206) 329-2629 for general info or (206) 267-5380 for show times. Cherri and Spud images from Animation World Network and SensaCine.
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