TUNE - DVD review

A blurb on the cover of "Bill Plympton's The Tune," subtitled "an outrageous animated comedy extravaganza," features none other than Matt Groening, creator of "The Simpsons." Groening gushes, "It would make Bart Simpson laugh his ass off."

Ironically, what would appeal most to the Bartman is an extended nonsensical nonsequitor of a section that depicts two men in suits squaring off against each other, Itchy & Scratchy style. Like the sadistic cartoon cat and mouse that tickles Bart's funnybone, they do such things as tie the other's ears together in front of the face and then load the rubbery sling with a boulder that knocks the head right off, or molding the other's face into a baseball and then hitting a decapitating home run. Yep, Bart would laugh his little yellow buttocks off, but this violent sequence has little to do with the slender plot strand that connects the animated musical episodes in Plympton's first full-length effort, released in 1992.

Plympton, an independent animator, has a style as rough and sketchy as Groening's debut comic strip, "Life in Hell," which was widely syndicated in college newspapers. Like Groening's, his characters look like hastily scribbled drawings. They're brought to life using one-quarter animation, with rough shading lines on the characters and their clothing drawn irregularly, so that they appear to pulsate continuously, like strobe lights. Backgrounds are minimalist, and transitions? What are those? Though Plympton is no artist or animator extraordinaire, his cartoon shorts have found an appreciative audience because of the wacky mind-trip quality they have, a sensibility that hearkens back to the Sixties. Just as Groening clicked with college students in print, Plympton connected with the I-can't-wait-until-spring-break crowd when his short animated features (with such titles as "How to Make Love to a Woman," "Nose Hair," "25 Ways to Quit Smoking," and "More Sex and Violence") aired on MTV.

"The Tune," with its constant morphing of figures and landscapes, echoes The Beatles' full-length animated "Yellow Submarine" (1968). "Yellow Submarine" had a thin plot (The Beatles try to save Peppertown from the Blue Meanies) that was basically an excuse to string together a series of songs. It was an animated music video, and that's what Plympton has crafted. The ten songs take center stage.

In "The Tune," Del, a schlep of a songwriter, is stuck on a master-work that he's under pressure to write for Mega Music. They give him 47 minutes to write a hit song, or lose his job. Plus, he wants to marry Didi, a secretary at Mega Music, but with a creative block the size of a pick-up truck weighing him down, he gets depressed. While driving his car he passes a "Yiiikes!" caution sign and ends up on one tangled spaghetti bowl of a freeway exchange, after which his car morphs into a series of odd vehicles until it finally disappears. The next sign reads "Entering Flooby Nooby," which turns out to be a rhymer's and singer's paradise. None other than the mayor decides to give him a tour. "You think too much to write a great song," he tells Del. "You've got to feel all the emotions. Follow me, son, I'll show you what I mean."

Lesson one involves the "myth" of perspective, and trees get smaller, not bigger as Del and the mayor approach. We follow Del as he goes from place to place inside Flooby Nooby and meets characters who break into song with the ease with which one breathes. Del is impressed, and jots down notes (i.e., STEALS lines and ideas). Inside Dot's Diner, for example, a dishwater blonde launches into a country love song while the music video morphing continues as a piece of bacon hugs a fried egg and a hot dog and bun run through a field of flowers to get to each other. And it's on to a guru ("Oh please, wise man, tell me how to write the perfect song!"), where he's told to discover the purity of perfection, not the perfection of purity. Deep, huh? Head morphs, ears morph, and poor Del says, "I didn't understand a thing he said." Del also encounters an Elvis-impersonating dog, a bellhop who sings to him at the Love Sick Hotel, and a taxi driver who does a bluesy ballad while a bottle-slide guitar is shown doing its own thing and lyrics pop up on-screen with a bouncing ball that's so pliable it keeps changing shape, like the wax in a lava lamp, as it lands on the letters. And there's a stylish couple doing the tango, morphing into different body types and geometrical shapes as the music changes shape. Put any of these small sections on a cartoon short and the audience would mutter to themselves, "clever," or "weird." But hilarious they're not, and they don't function well enough strung together under this weak premise because of the rough quality of animation and drawing and the minimalist background and plot.

It's not BAD, mind you—just overly ambitious, given the limitations of Plympton's minimalist artistic style, nondescript characters, and weak plot. In 1987, Plympton's "Your Face" was nominated for an Animated Short Oscar," and his oddball animation might work in short doses. But the pulsing shading and the morphing gets old after a while—after all, when it comes to that sort of acid-tripping thing, The Beatles did it better, and with more vibrant colors, complex backgrounds, and psychedelic leaps. Yet, The Beatles also did it with a full team of animators, storyboard artists, directors, and editors. Plympton did this essentially with composer Maureen McElheron, handling all the drawing and animation himself. It's "mind-boggling" that a single man could pull off a full-length animated feature, Groening says, and you have to agree with him.

Video:
With an independent film, the stock is never as fine-grain as those used by the big studios, but the saving grace is that the rougher film stock is compatible with the primitive, sketch-like characters and objects that populate Plympton's world.

Audio:
The audio is a simple Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0, which, given the lively Maureen McElheron score—an eclectic blend of jazz, blues, country, tango, and rock—is too bad. The music is one of the highlights, and it's a shame there's not more main speaker action.

Extras:
For an indie film, "The Tune" has an orchestra pit full of extras. Plympton and composer McElheron offer an excellent full-length commentary, and there's also a 1993 documentary on "Bill Blympton: Twisted Toons," which has the same editing quality (though not the same sharpness and clarity) of big studio "making of" features. There are some nice surprises, with the wife of "Beanie and Cecil" animator Bob Clampett making an appearance, and "Simpsons" creator Groening on-camera talking about Plympton. The gem of this feature, though, is Plympton's first animated short, a simple 1968 line-drawing production made to promote the Florida State University yearbook. There's also an extensive "making of" storyboard gallery, along with a Plympton photo gallery, a "Hair High" trailer, filmmaker bios, and music tracks from "The Tune." Quite a nice package for Plympton fans.

Bottom Line:
People unfamiliar with Plympton's work will watch this and think to themselves, "Very clever" or "Interesting," for the first half-hour, and go "Wow" later, when "Tango Schmango" really knocks your socks off. But because there's no progression or significant variation in the animation (just more of the same), there's no charismatic characters, and the plot is an excuse for the music, Plympton's whacked-out style isn't enough to sustain the average viewer's interest for 72 minutes. Plymptonites of the fanatical sort will appreciate the whole film; the rest of us will savor only parts.