I just saw this feature length cartoon at the New York Underground Film Festival. The plot involves an astronaut who was trapped in orbit due to the nefarious scheming of the "Department of Space," and who returns to earth with a small army of mutant aliens to exact his revenge. This is mainly an excuse for a lot of spirited animation; the story itself is chaotic. This film gave me about half a dozen belly laughs with its excessive sex & violence, humorous songs, and aliens shaped like giant noses, eyeballs, and fingers. The film begins to lag towards the end, as the astronaut offers a few retellings of what happened while he was trapped in space, but this is a tight eighty minutes of quality animation. Visually, the film's strength is not due to any technical precision or revolutionary style, but rather, the sense of immediacy that is only possible when an artist has complete control over his work. I don't believe in number rankings, so I'll just say that "Mutant Aliens" wouldn't rank as high as a film like Ralph Bakshi's "Heavy Traffic." If you want to view some serious animation from an independent filmmaker, this is worth your time. If you're interested enough to look up this film, I believe the visuals and script will make you laugh.

I saw this film over the weekend in the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema and it is perhaps Bill Plympton's most extreme animated feature, out-sexing and out-violencing even "I Married a Strange Person." (And, for those worried about whether Plympton's gone soft on religion, he's also included a little ditty entitled "Can't Drag Race with Jesus.") That said, this film is hilarious and holds together fairly well as a story.

Wow.. A great film!!! I was amazed in front of this visual masterpiece that brought me back to my teen years (when I loved watching gores and sex in Heavy Metal or in mangas). But even more to the sex and gore is the funny and critical story that makes Mutant Aliens A great film in its kind. "Chapeau" to Bill! Seb