Film: Anomalisa

This is what they call stop motion animation (it isn’t what they call it, it’s what it is).Animation that looks so real, it’s weird that it isn’t. This adult story, after all, would work perfectly well as a regular film.Michael Stone is an expert in customer service. So am I think to myself, and sit to attention. He’s written a book on the subject - one I can’t imagine ever wanting to read - and while on a trip to deliver a conference speech, he contemplates his mundane life. The story is typical so far; middle-aged, married man having a the proverbial mid-life crisis thinking about the love he lost and what may have been.Stone is in Cincinnati and from his comfortable hotel room, decides to call his aforementioned ex who lives in the city. Insecure as she is, after all these years, turns up at short anyway for a night-cap but mainly to ask him why he left her. It doesn’t go well and he moves on, rather randomly to a fan, a customer services assistant, who remarkably is staying with a colleague on the same floor.So those are part of the gentle funny moments – this film is billed as a comedy – and I realise after a little while that all the voices sound the same.They are the same. All except what become the two main characters.Did I mention this is the oddest film I ever recall seeing? At first I think there is a gay thing going on as the opening scene is of Stone on a plane, with a man asleep on his shoulder. Then he is thinking of his ex, who in the dream bubble sounds like a man (and only looks a little like a woman). Later, in another bizarre dream sequence, everyone in the hotel staff seems to have a crush on him, male and female.What’s with the bizarre faces that appear to be masks covering robots? Oh and Fregoli Hotel. Fregoli, apart from being the pen-name of the writer, I learn later is a delusional condition when someone thinks several people are the same person.The film’s style stops what would be an ordinarily tale of a lonely man looking for excitement seem incredibly interesting. There’s a pretty graphic puppet sex scene later, there is no gayness.Cultural references abound, bizarre and entirely watchable, despite the lack of any customer service anecdotes.7/10Smile factor 7½/10