Hair High

Such a great work.One of the best animations that I've ever watched, although the story is very common; popular guy and cheerleader go out together but a "a new kid in school" falls for this popular cheerleader.

Drawings are very expressive you can almost taste the life they are living at the screen. I think this animation deserves more than just congratulations.

The thing about this animation is it makes you wonder and at the same time makes you want to watch over and over again.

If you haven't still watched it you may be missing a lot in my opinion.

Enjoy.

I wonder if Pink Floyd's The Wall animations helped inspire this little animation gem. I wish this had had greater circulation. The Triplets of Belleville comes to mind as well. The story is strange, the animation brimming with nicely realised ideas. I guess you could compare it to Carrie. It's sort of a grand All-American nightmare. I found this movie at an op shop. Another lucky day for me!

This story is in the same mode as Rod Serling's original "Twilight Zone," except with much more heart and soul, and less Old Testament style revenge. You learn to love the characters, even the ones you initially think are cruel.

After all the overproduced and overhyped animated films, that promise wonders but give us the same old thing - THIS is the reason we come back to watch animation. I've seen several of Plympton's short films, but they didn't prepare me for the beautiful characters, the simple and clear story, and (most amazingly) the 50's - 60's style teen music.

See it in the theatres AND buy it on DVD when it comes out. Be aware, though; there's some violence and messy stuff that very little kids probably shouldn't see. Kids above age 12 should be able to handle it, though.

This is a bit of a psychedelic rockabilly animated nightmare. Packed with 50s American cool, depicted with 60s European charm. Telling the story Spud, a new kid in high school, it's a familiar and not particularly original story, but Spud is likeable and as he says "he just doesn't know the rules". The rules being that teenagers are obnoxious and if movies have taught us anything, it's American teens are more obnoxious, stupid and self centred than most. It certainly seems that Bill Plympton has made exactly the film he wanted to... a pretty disgusting, dialled up to 11 X-Rated version of The Rugrats do Carrie. His style signposts every inch of this and feels devoid of outside interference, which in itself is pretty cool. For all it's B-Movie cool though, it boasts a pretty decent cast of voice actors. I can honestly say I've never seen anything quite like this before.

One of the most easily recognisable auteurs working in animation, Bill Plympton has produced a succession of animated features and shorts which delight with their unique style and idiosyncratic world view. His is a bizarre world which, unusually for such hand drawn work, normally assumes the presence of an adult audience and where the exaggerations of sex can be sniggered over for all the right reasons. HAIR HIGH is no exception, and continues the animator's regular obsessions with the strained relationships between sexually optimistic men and women, detailed with black humour all the while laced with some side swipes at the ironies of romance. There's also plenty of hair spray, horny chickens, a good soundtrack, smoking, and the genital stimulation of frogs. Rudeness, surreality and extremes of physical contortion appear again as part and parcel of the plymptonesque world - which this time includes nods to such disparate films as REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO. HAIR HIGH is voiced by such talent as Keith and David Carradine, Ed Begley Jnr and Matt Groening. Ostensibly a moralistic tale of 50's high school love that ends in comi-tragedy, HAIR HIGH actually engages as a characteristic free wheeling fantasy, allowing the animator to indulge in all sorts of off the wall scenes and images propelling the narrative forward. For those better used to the tight pencil work and plot construction of more regularly exposed animation studios Plympton's work, which leaps more immediately from the artist's bizarre subconscious, often comes as a wake up call. In its attempt to drag cartoons out of the juvenile closet Plympton's longer work has been blazing a trail for years. With not a cuddly, wise-cracking animal in sight and a hands-off view with regards to any computer generated figures, HAIR HIGH is a must for admirers of Plympton. Since this film Plympton has completed two other features, including SHUT EYE HOTEL and, most intriguingly, TOKYO ONLYMPIC, which at 137 mins is slated at his longest yet, double that of the present title.