Pages

Monday, August 4, 2008

My Beautiful Girl, Mari

My Beautiful Girl, Mari is a beautiful girl, indeed. In fact, she's so beautiful that nobody seems to care if she's kind of slow, doesn't have much to say, and tends to ramble on incoherently about ridiculous flights of fancies. (Giant white puppy dogs walking on cotton candy clouds? Puhleeze.)

The initial glimpse of her is quite heavenly, evoking images of flight, serenaded by heart-tugging song. And then the rest of the hour passes by in slow motion, thanks to some of the slowest animated framerates I have ever seen. You know, for a movie about the fleeting spirit of childhood, she sure doesn't fleet. But moves. Like a corpse. With a walk. -king stick.

She's also a fairly shallow creature, deluding herself into thinking that gradually revealing cause-and-effect statements like "my father died, I'm sad" or "my best friend is leaving, I'm lonely," is somehow deep and moving. She also keeps implying that her crazy LSD-induced images aren't just random, abstract delusions, but are actually ambiguous visual metaphors that mean something, which she, of course, refuses to reveal. If inkblots can mean something, hon, I'm sure humongous flowers and shining marbles can too.

Mari did get one thing right, though. She is a lot like a childhood dream - nostalgic and pleasant look at, but doesn't really amount to much and, in the end, is completely, completely forgetful.

My Beautiful Girl Mari: 4/10

1 comment:

Sam Suhr said...

Clearly you've become too used to the mock-heavy philosophism and action-driven plots of bulk Japanimation. Why try to review something you don't even get in the first place? Stick to your giant robots.