Having seen the film 1 and 1/2 times, I'm still not totally sure why it's called DESERT MIRAGE beyond some vague allusion made near the end. To me, it doesn't feel like the most appropriate title as it sounds redundant and serious while this bizarre film is anything but.
Filled with in-jokes and call-backs to other Fredianelli-helmed low budget films (especially the very similar THE BIG SLEAZE), the film follows an unlikable loser (played by Jeremy Koerner) as he struggles to get his life together while accompanied by a group of animated sidekicks. These sidekicks, including a raccoon, a goldfish, and a turtle, often bicker with each other over which direction Koerner should take his life, never missing and opportunity to cut him down and degrade his self esteem (as well as everyone else he knows in the real, non-animated world). Eventually things get quite dreary and violent as we follow the downward spiral of him struggling as an animator in a manner similar to the TAXI DRIVER.
This extremely foul-mouthed and violent movie certainly won't be for everyone (especially children and squeamish people) instead aiming for a Ralph Bakshi-ish style of deliberately finding as many ways to offend the audience as possible. At times I have to admit I was mightily amused, especially during the gonzo opening of the film though mostly during the more serious and quiet scenes later between the Koerner and his estranged brother (played by director Fredianelli himself in what may be his best performance yet). However on the whole I found things to be a little too brisk and inane, much in the same way SPACE JAM distilled a lot of classic characters into braindead and attention deficient shadows of themselves.
DESERT MIRAGE boasts a lot of surprisingly wonderful animation by a team of many skilled animators headed up by Chad Kaplan in a true tour de farce. The extremely low budget shines through quite a bit though with things never really maintaining a consistent look, and many of the scenes where the animated characters interact with the real world (especially any shots with moving camera) are missing a critical bit of polish. Sure it's meant to be rough around the edges, but a few goof-ups and animation short-falls (like having the raccoon's non-expressive face fill the screen so long during the scene where he tries to entice Koerner to hit on his neighbor) just took me out of the movie. Amazingly Koerner holds everything together as there's nothing sloppy at all about his masterful performance in which he invests everything he has into creating a believable, albeit disturbing, lead character.
Overall if you're one of the few in the mood to chuckle at some grotesque mean-spirited humor and take in some sporadically great bang-for-the-buck animation, give this decidedly underground film a chance.
