A Scientist at the Movies Reviews by Greg Paris

The Evaluation System Reviews by Title Reviews by Date

Reviews from Video Reviews of the Classics Personal Background

Title: I Met the Walrus

Date Viewed: 2/18/08

Details:

Voice talent: John Lennon (archive sound)

Jerry Levitan (the interviewer)

Written & directed by: Josh Raskin

Producer: Jerry Levitan (the original interviewer!)

Score: 1/2

The Review: Animation; documentary in part. As we are informed -- out of band, via other reviews -- apparently, in 1969, a youth (Levitan) snuck into John Lennon's hotel room with a tape recorder and convinced him to do an ad hoc interview. The recording is the sound track for what amounts to the visualization of a songwriter's philosophy. Accurately evokes the style of Yellow Submarine and the idiosyncratic animation of the times, although simpler and in B&W.

Canadian. This is one of this year's (2008) five Oscar-nominated animated shorts, along with Meme les Pigeons vont au Paradis, Moya Lyubov, Madame Tutli-Putli, Peter and the Wolf, all available to the general public via digital video release into selected theatres (for the third year) from Magnolia. The highlights for me were My Love for artwork and Peter and the Wolf for characterization, but in general, this year's collection didn't seem to click quite so well as in previous years. Yes, each has its own distinctive signature quirk, animation style, and twist on the expected storyline -- it's easy to see why this broad representation was nominated. But it's hard to know what else was in the running through the year, and there's nothing that sticks out as prominently as my memories of The Passenger (from 2007), or especially 9 (from 2006). Maybe it's because there was no Pixar entry? The collection was reasonably good, overall, and an entertaining mix.

(22-Feb-08)

Back to the chronological list of reviews