wenty years ago, United States astronaut Earl Jensen (McComas) was launched into space only to have his ship sabotaged by the man who sent him there, Dr. Fubar (Casden) of the Department of Space, as part of a scheme to get the department more funding. Unable to return to Earth, Jensen was forced to leave behind his adoring, 5-year-old daughter, Josie (Lobis), and drift into the vastness of the universe.
Today, Josie has a job at an observatory and, one evening, right in the midst of a booty call from her boyfriend, Darby (Brown), she spots a flaming object falling to Earth. Eventually able to convince the Department of Space not to shoot this mysterious object out of the sky, Josie discovers that it's actually her father's capsule!
After a crash landing, the ship opens to reveal an older but alive-and-well Earl Jensen, who (after relieving himself) tells a marvelous tale of his adventures on a peanut-shaped planet inhabited by creatures that resembled giant noses, eyes, fingers and other human parts. The crowd of onlookers that have witnessed the astronaut's return home, at first dumbstruck, are now laughing heartily—that is, until a giant nose-like creature emerges from Earl's capsule. Then all hell breaks loose.
After the original panic subsides a bit, Earl requests some face time with his old "friend," Dr. Fubar (whose latest moneymaking scheme is a drool-worthy "Adship" that would place a giant screen in Earth's orbit, viewable by countless potential consumers). But in the past two decades, Fubar has grown not only more powerful, but more paranoid. His reluctance to meet with Earl may prove to be sound, though, as the true nature of Earl's return is revealed, as is the true nature of the freaky "aliens."
Things that make you go "Hmm?"
On one level, Mutant Aliens is a fairly conventional comedic science-fiction movie—weirdo creatures from outer space come to Earth to do battle with the likes of the pigheaded American military; good-hearted and strong-willed scientist types try to set things right; wackiness ensues; etc. But the wackiness of this movie is of a fairly particular sort—the Bill Plympton sort.
A largely independent filmmaker and illustrator, over the past couple of decades Plympton has established himself as a unique voice in the world of cartoons. This, his most recent offering, has a number of things in common with much of his other work—like a satirical interest in the arousing grotesqueness of sex and other things bodily and in the sheer ridiculousness of human behavior, for example. But Mutant Aliens does also contain those more conventional narrative/comedic elements, and the combination isn't always so appealing a result.
Too long by probably a quarter of its full length (83 minutes), the film often gets tripped up in its own bizarre progression as a story. The effect may leave many viewers asking at various points, "OK, now why exactly is this happening?" Putting surreal twists on traditional storytelling methods is often a great way to produce good satire, but Mutant Aliens miscalculates this formula on a number of occasions, one result being that the film's potential political messages are largely undermined by heavy-handed and occasionally hackneyed delivery.
Plympton's signature animation style—at once intentionally sketchy, jumpy, richly textured and often wonderfully grotesque—produces some rather funny and dramatic effects, as usual. But, again, the production often seems to be stretching to maintain the quality required for a feature-length animated film. Tragically, there lies one of the potential pitfalls for independents—or independence.
