Michelle EMary and Max Review
July 27th 2009 04:19
I knew this film wasn’t going to be like many I’d seen, and I was right!
Mary and Max is the latest offering from Australian film maker Adam Elliott, creator of the Academy Award Winning animated short, Harvey Krumpet (2003). It is the story of a twenty year pen-pal relationship between a lonely eight year old girl named Mary, and a 42 year old Jewish man in New York named Max, who has Asperger’s Syndrome.
The film features many Australians, including Toni Colette, Eric Bana and Barry Humphries. Furthermore, Elliott designed, directed and wrote the film, and it shows. It’s highly individualistic, very Australian, and wholly uninterrupted in comedic and narrative vision.
The plot takes a great many twists and turns, and the characters are at times both cringingly raw, and highly amusing. Jokes frequently spring up from where you least expect, and the Claymation animation lends it a distinctly child-like edge.
The film contemplates many different issues through the letters of the pair, and it is a work with meaning, and deep originality. Mary and Max is funny, clever and very moving- centering on the way that certain friendships in one’s life can cause it to change course irrevocably.
3 ½
Mary and Max is the latest offering from Australian film maker Adam Elliott, creator of the Academy Award Winning animated short, Harvey Krumpet (2003). It is the story of a twenty year pen-pal relationship between a lonely eight year old girl named Mary, and a 42 year old Jewish man in New York named Max, who has Asperger’s Syndrome.
The film features many Australians, including Toni Colette, Eric Bana and Barry Humphries. Furthermore, Elliott designed, directed and wrote the film, and it shows. It’s highly individualistic, very Australian, and wholly uninterrupted in comedic and narrative vision.
The plot takes a great many twists and turns, and the characters are at times both cringingly raw, and highly amusing. Jokes frequently spring up from where you least expect, and the Claymation animation lends it a distinctly child-like edge.
The film contemplates many different issues through the letters of the pair, and it is a work with meaning, and deep originality. Mary and Max is funny, clever and very moving- centering on the way that certain friendships in one’s life can cause it to change course irrevocably.
3 ½
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