"Anomalisa" Review

Few storytellers tap into the complexities of human emotions with more honesty than Charlie Kaufman. With Anomalisa, he returns to the screen for the first time since 2008's Synecdoche, New York, now pulling double duty as writer/co-director with Duke Johnson.

From the poster above, it's easy to tell that Kaufman's new film is well-marketed with superlatives that make it sound like a life-changing masterwork of modern cinema. An Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature all but seals its status as the can't-miss puppet show of the season. While Anomalisa offers much more dramatic nuance and understated comedy than your typical Punch & Judy sketch, the film's stop-motion pleasures only take it so far.

By the time the credits rolled, I felt unmoved albeit mildly entertained.

The story follows Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis), a customer service guru who has just traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio to speak at a conference. Despite having a successful, bestselling book and a loving family back in Los Angeles, Michael struggles with the mundanity of his existence. To him, everyone looks and sounds alike (all ancillary characters, male and female, are voiced by the same man - Tom Noonan). Everyone, that is, except Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh), a seemingly insignificant woman who turns out to be the one person able to give Michael a fresh perspective. She's an anomaly in his mundane life; "anoma-Lisa," as he agrees to call her.

Questions are left frustratingly unanswered in the end, and it appears as if the events of the film don't really change Michael as much as we're lead to believe the whole time. Maybe that's the message, that temporary solutions are rarely the real answer. Or perhaps the final lesson really is that "there is no lesson" - something that Michael himself alludes during the film. Either way, that's kind of a ballsy message to try and get across in a film, but either way it didn't quite work for me. It's really a far more depressing piece of work than I expected.

Cincinnati natives especially should chuckle at the way Kaufman pokes fun of the city, especially the chili and the zoo. Being from that area myself, the jokes about both are pretty spot-on. That's really where Anomalisa shines. Its humor comes from the relatable nuances of Michael's day. It takes him five tries to get the card key to work to his hotel room, regardless of what rush, or lack thereof, he's in. He takes a ride in a cab where the driver won't shut up about things to do and see in the city.

Kaufman has always had a talent for creating vivid, almost fantastical, worlds that either mirror our own or exist within them. Anomalisa's sense of humor serves the world-building quite well, as we've all come to expect from Kaufman.

The voice acting is also strong, as is the technical, stop-motion wizardry from Johnson. I think this story is actually quite effective with puppets - especially the aspects regarding the Fregoli syndrome and certain moments when Michael begins to question his own identity. That said, it's still a story we've seen many times before, even occasionally from Kaufman himself (see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or the movie Her from frequent Kaufman collaborator Spike Jonze).

While Kaufman and Johnson deserve some props for creating such a vivid world filled with nuance and sleight humor, there's nothing from narrative or emotional standpoints that makes me want to rush out and recommend Anomalisa to everyone. Even though this film is meant to be smart animation for adults, my money is on Pixar's Inside Out for the Oscar. It navigates the complexities of human emotions more accessibly and therefore more effectively.

C