In turns despairingly dull and wistfully wacky, the stop-motion Anomalisa is one of those films that has the critics reaching for the superlatives whilst leaving audiences generally baffled.
Nominated for best animation Oscar, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Venice Film Festival, penned by Charlie Kaufman, the story of Tom Stone, the depressed customer relations expert, wears its credentials on its sleeve. (Tom is splendidly voiced in a flat Lancashire accent by David Thewliss.
But sporadically funny, inventively clever with its animation, usually very odd (Stone is suffering from the rare Fregoli syndrome – the delusional belief that different people are in fact the same person) fail to disguise [sic] that Anomalisa eventually runs out of emotional steam.
Nominated for Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2016.
Rating: 47%
Director: Duke Johnson (TV’s Community, Moral Orel), Charlie Kaufman (Synecdoche New York, TV’s How and Why)
Writer: Charlie Kaufman (Synecdoche New York, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
Main cast (voice): David Thewliss (Harry Potter, The Theory of Everything), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Synecdoche New York, Margot at the Wedding), Tom Noonan (Synecdoche New York, The Astronaut’s Wife)
An Opinion or Two 