Institute History
Description
The Federal Government in nefarious league with big industry? Clearly, Bill Plympton has crafted an outlandish work of science fiction in this, his latest animated epic. Audiences still reeling from Plympton's past Sundance Film Festival hits The Tune and I Married a Strange Person will be only partially prepared for this far-flung trip from outer space to the inner reaches of one of cinema's most fertile imaginations.
Astronaut Earl Jensen is blasted into space on a routine mission, which is sabotaged by the evil Dr. Frubar, a space program bigwig who plans to twist Earl's "accident" into public relations grist for an outlandish and costly new spacecraft initiative benefiting greedy advertiser cronies. Twenty years later, Earl's orphaned daughter Josie is an accomplished and obsessive astronomer, closely watching the heavens that swallowed her father. When Earl's long-lost ship unexpectedly plummets to earth, followed by a second craft containing bizarre alien creatures, Josie reunites with Earl, and a full-scale war ensues that pits the Jensens and their extraterrestrial friends against the Machiavellian Dr. Frubar. A family's vengeance and the soul of a nation hang in the balance!
Topping off his outlandish story with generous dollops of grotesquerie (including a hilarious appropriation of the contemporary Pokemon craze), Plympton creates a viable cinematic world in which sex and violence are just two of the forces that spur the good characters on to orgasmic victory over evil. A triumph of unbridled imagination, the film is a welcome entry in the canon of animated films for grownups.