This is a comedy, but not a quick-witted uproarious one. It's a clay-mation feature that has the narrative style and tone that you would see in a book for grade-school children, but I think the ideal audience is actually a grown-up. Especially early in the film, the establishing scenes are sad in premise but somehow charming in execution. The film has a third-person narrator, but the story is still presented from the points of view of the main characters (the charm is managed largely by Mary's interpretation/non-understanding of some of the otherwise sad aspects of her life; the narrator will say what Mary or Max thinks or feels while the animation will show what we viewers might interpret in a different way).Mary is a little girl in Australia who shortly into the film writes a letter to a random name/address she found in an American phone book. Max -voiced by Phillip Seymore Hoffman (Capote), though I didn't recognize his voice- is an awkward middle-aged New Yorker who rarely leaves his apartment other than to attend his Overeaters Anonymous meetings or to see his psychiatrist. His reply happens to be perfectly suited for the young child reader due largely to his particular and idiosyncratic personality. They strike up a pen-pal relationship and the film follows them over the years. Each is the other's only friend. One of the cool aspects of the animation is that her life is portrayed in very few colors, mostly shades of brown, and his is in purely in greyscale... you almost don't notice until one of them mails an object to the other and the object retains the color scheme from its origin.
The movie is more charming than funny, but I chuckled a few times as well (though I mostly just smiled at the charm). The story does indeed get sad, though more in the second half than the first, so you are eased into it. Children might like the earlier half, though depending on the age they might not understand what's going on. Very protective parents might not want their children to see/hear some of the more grown-up themes, but I think most would not object; I'll leave it to you to decide which you are. The film is not rated, but I'd guess it as a PG, maybe a strict PG-13. It could be a nice movie for a family to watch together, though I think an adult couple with a bowl of popcorn and a relaxing evening might enjoy it most. I myself really liked it.
Bruce Campbell
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