Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space

"Tamala 2010" is a great animated movie with a great soundtrack, period. I could stop there and the review would be complete, but I'll say more. Much more.

To begin with, this is an animated film by a group that calls itself "t.o.L", and I'm assuming that they came up with the design, the animation, the characters, and the music. It's a film with a plot that could be sketched on a napkin. But that's besides the point. This film is a great fusion of design, 2D and 3D animation, and music in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It's as if the children of the creators of Yellow Submarine approached R. Crumb about making "Fritz the Cat" into a film again, Crumb angrily turns them down, so they go to a group of Japanese animators to make a cat-themed movie, and get the spirit of Philip K. Dick as their creative consultant.

The result is an animated masterpiece where one scene flows into another, largely driven by music and exciting artwork and visuals, but hardly ever by plot. If this sounds like Disney's "Fantasia", it's not. Tamala is a "cute female cat" who is going from CatEarth to Orion to find her mother, but is diverted along the way to Planet Q (or Q Planet) and ends up in "Hate City" which is a skid row slum type of place with a war going on between cats and dogs.

Both CatEarth and Planet Q are highly original creations. We spend most of the movie on Planet Q. Overshadowing everything is the mysterious, sinister, and somehow comforting "Catty & Co." which is a capitalistic conglomerate that controls 99% of all production. Catty & Co. is everywhere, like Big Brother, but more indifferent. It is this "Feline Galaxy" that t.o.L has created that is the big selling point of the movie for me. Now that I've been introduced to it, I want to see more of it, like I want to see more of Springfield each week on "The Simpsons".

The attention to detail is amazing. Every scene in this movie has something to offer. There are no wasted backdrops, everywhere you look there are posters and advertisements for Catty & Co., with a brilliant array of designs. So much work went into this movie, so much care was placed in executing each scene, that I had to see it twice, to see all of the details I missed the first time.

And what about the characters? Tamala is a "cute female cat" as the movie calls her, but she's no "Hello Kitty". She's an enigmatic symbol that the animation flows around. The film get quite a lot of emotional mileage out of these simple characters, considering how simply she, Michelangelo (her friend on Planet Q), and the Professor are drawn by the animators.

This review wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention the great soundtrack. This movie could be broken up into just the animation that goes with the songs and it would still be great. It's a fusion of electronica, heavy metal and pop, and in the context of this film it's fantastic.

This is not a film for young kids, it's pretty much R-rated fare. There are some very violent scenes, and occasional use of the "F-word" by Tamala mostly. Though Tamala makes a few sexually suggestive comments, nothing ever happens, and most of the "sexy" talk is from two gay male cat hustlers who talk about other gay male cats they find attractive, but nothing happens visually, it's all talk. "Hate City" is violent, oppressive, dirty, damaged, it's one perpetual skid row, and I wanted more of it, it was a great, original creation! But it's not for young kids, they wouldn't understand it.

I went to www.tamala2010.com but could not get the Japanese language pack to install, so I could not get any information about whether there will be a sequel, and I was able to find little credible information about t.o.L via Google, so I am in the dark about the future of this "project" as their site calls it. All I can hope is that they will create more planets with dysfunctional societies for Tamala and her friends to explore. This film is a true work of art, and a true 10 out of 10.

Forget plot. Dispel any notions of linear progression. This is animation simply for the purpose of animation, and it sort of works. This does have a few problems however--I felt it was about ten minutes too long. And the shades of black and white do become a little tedious after awhile (though there is alleviation in the strategic use of colors throughout).

One of the attributes of the movie, the one that could either draw viewers in or send them running, is its tendency to drift in a kind of dream-logic (I feel that animation works well with that sort of surrealistic play) with no regard towards traditional structure. The character design is simple, yet oddly emotive, and the music is dreamy enough to get lost in.

This movie makes me wonder what the next step in these kinds of animation projects is going to be.

While cute and enjoyable, the movie is no walk in the park. The art is fabulous and the plot can be challenging at times. Like most existential movies it will take some time and further viewings to get the most out of it. But the pleasure is all ours as watching this is both moving and entertaining. The best parts are areas where the music melds perfectly with the visuals and the plot. Luckily this happens often. I respect this movie most of all because it isn't lazy. The artists and crew come up with original stuff but they don't hide behind endless wierdness and confusion. This is up there with 2001 in terms of nearly towing the line perfectly between chaos and good old fashioned wierdness. There is a good backbone here, not just a cloud of ideas.

I went to this movie with no expectations of any kind, except that it was Japanese and animated. What I saw was perplexing and at times disturbing, but completely engaging from beginning to end.

If you consider satire comic exaggeration with a moral punch, then this might be satire, though it's difficult to figure out what the moral is. The connections between the title character, Catty & Co., the Fritz Lang style 3-D artificial world, and Minerva are spotty. It would probably help to take notes during the rotting old professor cat's lecture, both at his slide show presentation, and during his confrontation with Michelangelo. For those who haven't seen it or read it elsewhere, these are all cartoon cats.

But this is a movie, and you shouldn't need to take notes to enjoy it, and I enjoyed it thoroughly as it was presented. I love the black and white, sharply detailed designs, the splashes of vivid color, especially that painting Tamala discovers in the basement of the museum. The violence gets pretty intense in places, but it works very well and doesn't seem gratuitous.

Tamala is worth a second look, but seems to be strictly short-run in most venues here in the U.S. DVDs are available from their website, but they're Region 2. It will probably be a long while before I see it again, but I anxiously await that chance.

In the same whimsical frame of mind as the Japanese classic "Funeral Parade of Roses," Tamala 2010 is a surreal journey into the world of cats and product placement. Is that weird enough? My partner wanted to leave the theater the whole time, but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this flick. If you can suspend your "Western" need for plot and coherence, sit back and enjoy the fabulous animation (black and white tip o' the hat to Disney's "Steam Boat Willie"), crazy situations and fantastic soundtrack. Any film which takes place on another planet and includes both Hello Kitty drag queens and a mention of the Loch Ness Monster is OK by me. Even if you hate this film, YOU WILL NEVER FORGET IT!