Cyriak puts his talents to animating Bobobo’s chill electronica, adopting a mid-century retro aesthetic in which children multiply, sedans stretch, and everyone becomes a cog in a kaleidoscopic consumerist machine.
All posts by Gregory J. Smalley (366weirdmovies)
CAPSULE: PIECE BY PIECE (2024)
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DIRECTED BY: Morgan Neville
FEATURING: Voice of Pharrell Williams
PLOT: An autobiographical documentary about hip-hop producer/musician Pharrell Williams, with all interviews and dramatizations recreated in Lego animation.
COMMENTS: Pharrel Williams, of course, is well-known as the composer and producer of such hits as… um… well, I confess I can’t actually remember any of the titles. With his band/production unit the Neptunes, Pharrel has worked with a lot of other performers whose names I’ve heard but whose tunes I can’t hum: Kendrick Lamar, Gwen Stefani and No Doubt, Jay-Z, Justin Timberlake. He primarily produces and sells “beats” (as an old fogey, I still haven’t adjusted to the fact that “beats” have replaced “songs” as the primary unit of pop music). All of them have the quality of being “catchy”: i.e., unique enough to tickle your ear, but generic enough to feel familiar and comfortable.
I write the above not to praise my own snobbishness or to disparage Williams’ art. He’s clearly an accomplished pop craftsman, but his musical style just isn’t my thing. But the remarkable thing is that, by telling what otherwise would be a self-serving, by-the-book musical biodoc about a subject I don’t care about through the unexpected format of Lego animation, Williams captured my attention. It’s a gimmick, but it works: not only is it visually (and even synesthesially) interesting, but there is just enough resonance between Lego blocks and the modularity of the creative process to make for an apt metaphor.
It is, of course, amusing to see scenes like Lego Pharrell Williams meeting Lego Snoop Dogg. A plastic box labeled “PG Spray” puts a smile on everyone’s face during their audience, which embodies the carefree, child-friendly approach to Williams’ story. The film never loses its optimism that everything will always work out for Pharrell (and, it suggests, for anyone else who adopts his gee-whiz, gung-ho workaholism). But, in between the cute cubist celebrity cameos lie more ambitiously animated sequences. The Lego visuals, supplemented by digitally-applied neon, demonstrate more grandeur than expected. The tone is set in an early dream scene where a blocky yellow Triton knights young Pharrell in his undersea kingdom. It’s best exemplified by a bravura sequence where the musician explains his childhood synesthasia: he sits before speakers blaring a Stevie Wonder LP, which draw him into a trippy world where sound becomes “beautiful cubes of light cascading” over his blissed out Lego features. Pharrell’s commercial beats are depicted throughout as bouncing blocks arranged in novel geometric patterns with blinking lights attached. There also are singing whales, and a trip into space where Carl Sagan delivers cosmic wisdom. Piece by Piece may not be completely accurate, or provide much practical insight into the creative process, but it accurately conveys the ecstasy of inspiration that keeps artists slaving away at their craft. Like any mega-celebrity, Williams is primarily a marketer, devoting more care to the sizzle than to the steak. And this is great sizzle.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by “Anonymous,” who correctly noted “most of the weirdness is solely in the visuals, in a Fantasia sort of sense.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
SATURDAY SHORT: OVERNIGHT (2020)
An office worker suffers increasingly gruesome visions of his own death.
CAPSULE: NUDE TUESDAY (2022)
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DIRECTED BY: Armagan Ballantyne
FEATURING: Jackie van Beek, Damon Herriman, Jemaine Clement, Ian Zaro
PLOT: A middle-aged European couple goes to a New Age sex resort in an attempt to rekindle their passion.
COMMENTS: Although it’s a romantic comedy, Nude Tuesday is also, more importantly, an experimental film. Unfortunately, in this case, the experiment amounts to nothing more than a gimmick. The idea is that the actors rehearsed the script in English and then, when it came time to turn the cameras on, delivered the lines in vaguely Scandinavian-sounding gibberish. Two sets of writers who were unfamiliar with the original script then watched the film and provided subtitles. (The one created by Julia Davis is the default track in the US region; one presumes the alternate track from Ronny Chieng and Cecilia Paquola is also available on the Blu-ray, although I can’t find confirmation).
Woody Allen once infamously re-dubbed a Japanese spy film to change the story to the search for an egg salad recipe. But it quickly becomes apparent that Nude Tuesday‘s constrained scenario doesn’t lend itself to such a dramatic reinvention, and nor will the writer try for the sort of meta-comedy (e.g. a narrator recapping the plot, fourth-wall break addresses to the audience) that Allen occasionally fell back on to liven things up. Without that, the result is that there is almost literally no line the dubber can write that couldn’t have been written in the usual way. In creating the new dialogue, Davis faces a lot of constraints: who’s in the scene, the length of the spoken lines, contextual requirements (is the character naked? Bleeding? Chasing a goat?) This means that the dialogue is always a slave to the demands of the scene as it’s been set up, and Davis has little actual freedom besides word choice. (She can, for example, make a preening Bjorn say the absurd line “I’m an eagle pimp with a bit of a grudge,” though a regular scriptwriter could have inserted that line anyway). Every reaction is so strictly dictated by the demands of the dialogueless script and the actor’s performances that there’s almost no margin for surprise; I can only think of one gag Davis was able to set up that wasn’t strictly dictated by the situation (a joke regarding the bean supermarket aisle). To be fair, there’s also the fact that the finale is constructed somewhat ambiguously, so that there could be multiple outcomes (I wasn’t overly fond of the one chosen here.)
So, while it may have been a stimulating writing exercise for the dubbers, there’s no possible payoff for the audience. What we’re left with is an offbeat-yet-predictable sex comedy. The main attraction is Clemens, playing yet another narcissistic jerk deserving of a hearty comeuppance. The sex retreat’s rituals can be amusing, with orgasmic breathing exercises, strange loungewear and banana hammocks, lots of awkward overplayed sensuality, and of course, nude Tuesday. And the script throws in a mushroom trip for funsies. But none of it is anything you wouldn’t expect to see in a relatively competent indie sex comedy. It’s a bit like being sold a ticket into something that was promised to be a freaskshow, and passing through the curtain to find one lonely dwarf and a bearded lady who just needs a quick pass-over with an epilady.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
![Nude Tuesday AMAZON EXCLUSIVE [Blu-ray]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41+B8mdylHL._SL500_.jpg)
- Amazon Exclusive!
- Contains an Amazon exclusive postcard.
- Behind the Scenes of Nude Tuesday
SATURDAY SHORT: FACES (2024)
Rianne experiences extreme stage fright and self-doubt over the prospect of delivering her imminent bride-of-honor speech.