Bill Plympton’s animation is too idiosyncratic, too downright strange, to stand as a definitive rebuttal to the by-now uniform conventions of CGI feature film animation, but it does expose what it is we’ve been missing all these years. Cheatin’, Plympton’s seventh animated feature, speaks in a visual language that never settles into simple reality.
When Plympton animates it’s not the smoothed over simulation of life found in a Pixar movie, but a story and style apart from normal narrative movies. While there is much that only animation can achieve in film — it’s hard to imagine a live-action Spirited Away, for example — Cheatin’ is pure, unrelenting evidence animation is not simply a genre, but a different world entirely.
Cheatin’ is about Ella, who falls in love with Jake and his countless abdominal muscles after a harrowing incident involving a gravity defying bumper car and an electrified puddle of spilled soda. The couple are deeply in love, with Jake rebuffing the endless women after his beautiful, horsey face and tiny handful of ass. But when a conniving woman tricks Jake into believing Ella is unfaithful it will take a hit-man, lots of grotesque sex, and a magician’s condemned soul-swapper to get them back together.
Cheatin’ Trailer
The sensation of watching Cheatin’ is to live in a state of impressed exhaustion, strained eyes agog as raindrops morph into flowers and stapled nipples (check out the clip) invert into a screaming madman weighed down with weaponry.
Sure, the endless invention in Cheatin’ can be tiring, but it’s worth it for lengthy sequences that show the depth of Plympton’s vision. Cheatin’ often ditches the plot for insane flights inside a woman’s heart or a one-man car chase involving a fish in the passenger seat and a whole lot of tears. This makes for some of the movie’s best moments but frequently threatens to tear apart any sense that you’re watching a feature length narrative film. Cheatin’ may be tiring to watch, but it’s such a singular demonstration of animation experimentation that it shames every cartoon that refuses to dance away from reality.
Cheatin’ will be available via Vimeo On Demand and limited theatrical release on April 21.
