Gangly-armed or thick-necked with off-colored skin tones or noses—the harshly drawn inhabitants of Nerdland don’t have the benefit of beauty to mask their ugly insides. They’re off-putting even when appealing. Like many of the character designs on Adult Swim cartoon shows, the characters’ distinctive features are sharpened and exaggerated in ways that makes their appearances unsettling. It should be no surprise that Nerdland comes from Chris Prynoski (Metalocalypse, Motorcity), veteran of the late night Cartoon Network universe, where absurdist and divisive humor has thrived for the past couple decades.

In the heart of the entertainment industry, nearly 30-year-old roommates John (voiced by Paul Rudd) and Elliot (Patton Oswalt) feel their shot at world fame is dwindling. At first, both seem like familiar characters repurposed for Nerdland’s grimy, stoner sketchbook aesthetic. The pair live together in a rundown Hollywood apartment with old beer bottles and pizza boxes strewn across the floor. Elliot, a would-be screenwriter, who spends more time on the couch playing video games than writing (a depressing familiar conceit) ends up penning a script about a vengeful Rip Van Winkle waking from his slumber to shotgun blast open the skulls of strip club patrons. His roommate John—an aspiring actor—is the gentler, naïf, Lenny Small-type. When John tries to pass off Elliot’s script to a well-known movie star, John fumbles the pages and rips his pants in an effort to pick them up, exposing his puckered anus to the crowd.

The hand-drawn feature animation is the first feature from animation house Titmouse, Inc., a smooth transition to the big screen that borrows animated TV comedies’ fast-paced style. Quick cutaways pepper the dialog-heavy moments with visual gags. They reveal the protagonists’ dreams of red carpets lined with adoring fans or boob-filled, heavenly utopias, many of which feel ripped from an angsty teenage boy’s fantasies. But like a random episode of Family Guy, these jokes range in quality from shocking and fun to predictably cynical. Its misanthropic charms often redeem Nerdland, but John and Elliot’s aversion to productivity can become grating to watch for the duration (even if that length is only 83 minutes).

John and Elliot’s pursuit of fame at any twisted cost makes the pair progressively harder to like. Nerdland‘s mocking vision of LA is short on any redeeming personalities. Filled with silly caricatures of the fame-worshipping underclass, it’s clear that the director Prynoski as well as the screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker hate just about every person in this world. And yes, that’s the same Andrew Kevin Walker who wrote Se7en and contributed an uncredited rewrite to Fight Club—a film with similar nihilistic social satire. With a considerably scattershot plot, one which has a somewhat episode design, Nerdland lacks some of the narrative momentum that comes from more cohesive stories.

While a majority of scenes revolve around the funny duo at the cartoon’s center, recognizable voices make cameos throughout. Comedians such as Molly Shannon, Paul Scheer, as well as Garfunkel & Oats’ Kate Micucci & Riki Lindhome make extended appearances. Among the funniest roles, Hannibal Burress’ discomforting slant on the standard, slovenly Comic Book Guy pairs well with his wry delivery. Like many of the notable comedians that lend their voice to Nerdland, Oswalt and Rudd don’t alter their voice for their roles—they’re each well-suited to the characters and make for an amusing, albeit unlikely pairing.

Victims of a media-driven culture, John and Elliot ultimately determine that their shortest path to recognition is through notoriety—though as a hapless pair of unskilled, intermittently unemployed slackers the duo’s ability to accomplish anything is questionable. Some of their antics are hilarious but as the film progresses, many of the bits drag on too long. Prynoski and Walker find some strange insights on their race to the moral bottom with John and Elliot—a commentary that often acts more searing and urgent than it is—but like a developing TV comedy, Nerdland is often best in small patches.

It’s been an outstanding 2015 for Pixar. Coming just months after the studio’s conceptually elaborate and ingeniously inventive Inside Out is the more traditional, poetic and pure The Good Dinosaur. The former is a dazzling exploration of the human mind, the latter an agrarian ballad of the soul. Directed by Pete Sohn, The Good Dinosaur flips the classic boy-and-his-pet tale on its head with an odd role reversal: the towering beast is the talkative one, his human sidekick a non-speaking, mangy, doglike traveling partner. Still, the story’s mostly rooted in convention, fueled by good-natured, broad comedy and familiar life lessons to any and all Disney fanatics. It doesn’t break new ground in the same ways Inside Out does, but in the realm of visual artistry and craftsmanship, The Good Dinosaur is king.

Before any of the characters say a word, we get a demonstration of just how insane(ly talented) the digital artists at Pixar really are. Lush landscapes are blanketed by golden sunshine, shadows cast by the plants and animals living in tranquil harmony. It’s unmistakably our world (it’s breathtakingly convincing, really), but with a twist. As the movie opens we see earth 65 million years ago, around the time of the dinosaurs’ extinction. Rather than colliding with big blue, it whiffs and zooms onward into the cosmos, birthing an alternate timeline in which dinosaurs rule the planet for millions of years to come.

With knobby knees and an endearing lack of coordination, our leaf green apatosaur hero, Arlo (Raymond Ochoa), is welcomed into the world by Momma (Frances McDormand) and Poppa (Jeffrey Wright), hard-working farmers who hope he and his siblings, Libby and Buck, will help them tend to the family’s land for generations to come. This first portion of the story feels the most familiar, with the kids learning responsibility by plowing the fields and feeding the chickens at the foot of a toothy mountain range, the teeming landscape looking a lot like the American Northwest.

Arlo’s a bit of a runt and has an issue with fear, an undesirable trait Poppa’s determined to stomp out by taking him on a hunting mission, their target a young human “critter” who keeps stealing from the family’s corn harvest. A dark storm builds during their riverside pursuit, and Poppa tragically gets swept away by a flash flood, Mufasa-style. The family mourns, and just a short time later, Arlo sees the critter swiping corn yet again. He pursues with vengeance on his mind but, like his father, he gets swept away by the river’s current, leaving him stranded miles from home. His unlikely companion on his journey home is the critter, Spot (Jack Bright), a homo sapien who scrambles around on all fours and barks and snarls at anything of interest (Looney Toon the Tasmanian Devil comes to mind). Together, the once-enemies learn to trust one another as they search for home, meeting colorful allies and baddies along the way.

Mother nature is unquestionably the star of the show, arguably taking precedence over Arlo and Spot. There’s a strong sense that nature is the be-all-end-all, this enormous, beautiful, unfathomably powerful thing that the characters are at the mercy of at any given moment. Many movies cast our planet as a pretty backdrop, nothing more. But the folks at Pixar are more thoughtful than that, invoking the almost religious reverence of the great outdoors of classic great plains westerns and the films of Werner Herzog. Dinosaur feels most like a western when Arlo and Spot meet a family of t-rex buffalo herders, led by a grizzly, slow-talkin’ patriarch, played by the most popular cowboy thesp of the moment, Sam Elliott (the designers cleverly fashion the characters’ top teeth to resemble the actor’s signature snowy ‘stache).

The movie’s got a lot on its mind, touching on themes of family, loss, fear, and even the timeless battle between herbivores and carnivores: early on, Spot scavenges for animals and grubs for Arlo to eat, all of which repulse the long-necked plant eater. Eventually, they bond over their shared love of fresh berries and even share a moment where they wordlessly consider the value of fresh fruit. What’s problematic is that the film only touches on these ideas and doesn’t follow through in a fulfilling way, save for the main theme regarding Arlo finding courage in compassion. The story also seems to be leaning towards a message of chosen family, but that all gets undone in the end when Arlo and Spot make a heartbreaking decision that, while emotionally wrenching, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

These issues are easier to swallow when you consider how touchingly the characters’ friendship is developed. The movie’s most tender moment involves Arlo and Spot using sticks and lines drawn in the dirt to express to each other the hurt they feel for their lost loved ones. It’s nice to have a movie come along every once in a while that lets its characters shut up for a minute and appreciate their surroundings. The Good Dinosaur is more humble than Pixar’s typical fare, choosing to refine and riff on familiar ideas and themes rather than build new ones from the ground up and live on the cutting edge. It doesn’t feel hip and new, but timeless and classical, like movies from Disney Animation’s ’90s glory days.

The most purely cinematic movie of the summer is Shaun the Sheep Movie, a sublime, adorable stop-motion animated gift from Aardman Animations, the same folks who brought us Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run. It’s the most cinematic because it’s essentially a silent film, its story told wordlessly (aside from an infectious musical interlude) through the magic of simple sight and sound. Ingeniously conceived, meticulously crafted and effortlessly breezy, this is a movie for true cinephiles that their kids can have a blast with as well.

Aardman’s been putting on clinics in stop-motion animation for decades, and they keep getting better at their craft with each colorful confection they churn out of their beloved dream factory. But before I get into how gorgeous Shaun the Sheep Movie looks, I have to emphasize that the film’s beauty doesn’t lie solely in the hand-made figures and sets and their elegant animations, lovely though they are. The story co-writers/directors Richard Starzak and Mark Burton have put together is just as wondrous a creation as the detailed plasticine figures that play it out. There’s deep emotional depth and surprising dramatic heft to this all-ages movie, so while its surface-level visuals are amazing, Shaun the Sheep Movie is consistently amazing from crust to core.

The film is based on the popular long-running BBC series Shaun the Sheep, which follows the misadventures of Shaun and the rest of his fuzzy flock as they live life on Mossy Bottom Farm with a stern but caring farmer (simply named, “The Farmer”) and his dutiful dog, who takes pride in his job as farm-animal overseer. Shaun’s big-screen adventure sees the sheep leave the farm to rescure their beloved farmer when a scheme to break up the daily farm routine (brainstormed by the mischievous Shaun, of course) goes awry, sending The Farmer careening down the road toward the big city in his camper.

The Farmer wakes up in a hospital bed suffering from a bout of amnesia, and before long finds himself walking aimlessly through the busy streets. The sheep and the dog leave a breadcrumb trail of frightened denizens as they comb the city for their owner, and before long they’ve got a formidable foe tracking them down, an animal-control grunt with a mean streak called “A. Trumper.” The sheep clumsily try to evade their pursuer by playing piggy-back and disguising themselves in people clothes, but their cover’s blown when they start chomping on the menus at a fancy French restaurant.

It’s clever routines like this that make Shaun the Sheep so fun. Chaos and calamity presented in the most divinely staged and entertaining way is what Aardman is all about, and each scene they set in front of you is like a tiny gift box we get to unwrap and marvel at what’s inside. Shaun’s “vacation day” scheme, for example, is tons of fun: the sheep distract the dog by dangling bone on a string from a tree, synchronizing each tug with the dog’s hungry leaps; meanwhile, they jump over a fence until The Farmer is lulled into a deep sleep.

It’s this playfulness with real-world logic that makes animated features such a treasure, especially today. Younger generations are growing more and more obsessed and enamored with complaining about petty things like plot holes and scientific inaccuracies; in movies like Shaun the Sheep, we can actually delight in these lapses in logic. It’s absolutely hilarious when A. Trumper develops a crush on the sheep’s shoddy impersonation of a woman. He’s staring romantically into a pair of googly sheep eyes, and the fact that he actually buys the disguise is a wonderfully entertaining gag.

If you’ve never seen an Aardman picture before, now’s the best time to start. Their stuff is breathtaking, and there’s something moving about the tactility of the hand-formed characters and sets. It’s hard to quantify, but when you see even the slightest remnant of a fingerprint on one of the thousands of visual elements, it’s a signal that these cute little creations were made with love and hard work.

The scenario with The Farmer bonking his head is a classic one, with the inevitable resolution being, of course, a second bonk in the head to bring him back to reality. The filmmakers exchew that cliché, however, opting for an alternate resolution that actually brought a tear to my eye. Big-time emotion is what sets Aardman’s work apart, and what’s so extraordinary is that they can make you laugh, cry, gasp and cheer with the subtlest of gestures, be it a perfectly timed sigh from Shaun or a knowing smile from The Farmer to his four-legged family members. The folks at Aardman pluck on your heartstrings without you even knowing it.

It’s surprising and frankly disheartening that the state of animated movies has barely changed since its inception. Perhaps the biggest revolution in the art form was ushered in by Woody and Buzz Lightyear and in Pixar’s 1994 jump to the third dimension, Toy Story, but if you take a step back, the sad reality sinks in that animated movies are still as narrow in terms of subject matter as they ever have been. Virtually all animated features that hit theaters these days are either aimed at kids or at least kid-friendly, and adult subjects like sex, infidelity, drug use, and murder remain largely untouched, even in 2015, over 100 years since the world saw its first animated sequence on celluloid.

We’re long overdue for an animation revolution, a wave of films full of mature themes and imagery to expand people’s minds beyond the “cartoons are for kids” mantra that’s been ingrained in our culture for decades and continues to stifle the art form.

Bill Plympton, a veteran animator who’s managed to remain a completely independent artist throughout his decades-long career, has been fighting the good fight and trying to spark said revolution since he put pencil to paper. His work has been seen in film festivals and on television probably since before you were born, telling stories about the messier side of life with his inimitable style and surrealist philosophy.

Cheatin’ is Plympton’s latest film (though the prolific filmmaker has always got at least a couple of projects in the pipeline), a trippy tale about a husband and wife whose relationship slowly crumbles as outside temptation drives them apart. It’s a timeless tale told in timeless fashion, existing in a world where everything looks slightly wrong, and yet strangely familiar.

I had the honor of speaking with Mr. Plympton about the film, which is out on Vimeo On Demand today. In addition, his entire library of work is also available now on iTunes, including 60 short films and 10 full-length features.

You’ve been essentially autonomous as an artist for your entire career. Because of this, do you find you have a more intimate relationship with your fans than perhaps other artists?
I don’t think so. Everybody has fans, just mine are a little weirder. A little strange. There’s sex, violence, and surreal humor in my films, so I think that appeals to a special audience, certainly not family-type people. It’s a younger crowd, probably about your age. Mostly male, though Cheatin’ has been getting a lot of female fans. They’re a little more educated, people who like seeing something they’ve never seen before.

Film is still a relatively young art form, a little over a hundred years old. But to me, animation is still in its infancy, in a way. The type of animated films available to us are so narrow, almost exclusively telling stories that are appropriate for children. You know this as well as anybody. I think your work is important because it keeps alive the idea that animation can be much more expansive than it is, as far as subject matter. What do we have to do to get adult animated movies out there?
Thank you for saying that. It’s something I’ve been asking myself a lot. I don’t know. I think the preeminence of Disney in this country is one factor. People are afraid of mixing cartoons and sex. There’s still that conservative side of American society that prevents these films from getting major distribution. I know there’s a big audience for me, people who want to see something fresh, from a different viewpoint. It’s just a matter of getting the distributors to believe that. That’s been my struggle for 25 years. I hope Cheatin’ is the film that will break that glass ceiling that’s prevented animation from reaching adult audiences.

When I was a kid, I grew up loving animation. I still love animation. So it just makes sense to see adult ideas made with animation. Animation, to me, is a perfect art form. There are no limits to what you can do. Why would you just keep it for kids? It seems very offensive to me that that’s the way it is in this country. An example I use is Quentin Tarantino, who has a lot of sex and violence in his films, and they’re cartoons, basically. They’re very exaggerated, with big, weird characters. How come he can get away with it and I can’t? I just don’t understand it.

I think words get in the way sometimes. I think animation is the perfect art form as well, because some emotions and feelings cannot be expressed adequately through words. With animation, I think you can be more expressive.
I made this film without dialogue for three reasons. Number one is, it’s really expensive to get distribution because you have to do the translation and dubbing and subtitles. Number two is, I’m not really good at writing dialogue, and it’s hard to do lip-synch. Number three, I think it’s just more poetic and powerful to tell a story through sound, music, and visuals.

It’s cinema.
It’s cinema. Pure cinema. That’s the way I like it.

I think what a lot of people don’t get is, visual language is a language as well, and it’s often more articulate than the spoken word. You speak with your images.
I appreciate great writing, but this is just another style of storytelling. I don’t begrudge anybody for telling their stories the way they do; this is just what I prefer. I’m not doing it to be unique; it’s the way I prefer to communicate.

Illustration and animation is special to me because you can see the artist’s work right there on the page and screen. Every stroke. It’s so full of passion and hard work, and there’s a unique connection there. That’s all you on the screen.
Yes, that’s my hand. Every drawing you see on the screen is created by me, pencil on paper.

I enjoy the music in the film. Do you like being retro? Some people don’t want to be retro.
There are some retro elements in this film, no question. I just chose the best elements from each part of the filmmaking. The cars are ’40s, the fashion is ’50s, the architecture is ’20s, the music is European opera. It’s a mixture of different eras, and I like that. I want to create a world that’s unique and special, somewhere you’ve never been before. I like creating worlds that you want to go to and stay. It definitely retro, but it’s more a Neverland, this place that has two people trying to act out their problems.

What else are you working on these days?
I’m working on a film with Jim Lujan. He’s writing the story, designing the characters and doing the voices. He’s pretty well-known for his online cartoon, but it’s not very well animated. I said, “Jim, let’s do a feature film. You do the story and I’ll do all the animation and produce. We’re about a third of the way done, and it’s called Revengeance. It’s about the underbelly of L.A., cultists, wrestlers, bikers, transvestites; all the weird people in L.A.. We’re running a Kickstarter campaign for it, too. One of the cool things we’re doing is, for a pledge of $1,500 or more, I’ll animate you into the film as a character. You’ll be immortalized in a Bill Plympton feature film.

I love the character design in this film. It’s very extreme and exaggerated. Their physical appearance is very much reflective of their personality. Is this the farthest you’ve pushed your design?
Yes. I really wanted to let loose, stretch and exaggerate the physical reality of these characters. It was really fun. Whenever I’m doing a film, if I’m not having fun doing it, I’m doing something wrong. I really wanted to go crazy with the characters.

Are you the kind of person who keeps track of your progress as an artist? In other words, do you look back at your old work and think, “This film is where I learned to do this,” or “My style took a big leap here.”
Absolutely. I’m moving more and more to the surreal right now, but my early stuff was actually quite realistic. It’s always educational to see where I came from. I’ll look back at something I did 30 years ago as an illustrator, and I’d be doing things back then I thought were new now! Style comes back around.

A lot of artists hit a creative plateau, but I don’t think you’ve hit it, even though you’re a veteran.
I think the next few films I’m bringing out are some of the best I’ve ever done. I’m doing a short film called The Loneliest Stoplight that should be done next month. It’s about a stoplight that nobody uses. He’s on a country road in the middle of nowhere and no one cares about him. I’m recording Patton Oswald for it next week in L.A.. I hope I’m getting better. I’m learning more about animation, storytelling, and making better films. That’s the whole point: learning.

What’s your perfect creative environment?
Just sitting at home at my drawing board. I put on my headphones and listen to Emmylou Harris. I can be happy all day long drawing these characters.

Why Emmylou Harris? I love her music.
I grew up with country. I’m from Oregon originally. I listened to Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, people like that. I’ve got a lot of Emmylou Harris stuff. I love it.

Does she know that you listen to her when you work?
I met her at Sundance, actually! She was standing behind me in line for a film. I said, “I’m a big fan of your stuff! You’re so great! I’d love to do a music video with you!” She said, “Here’s my card, send a letter to my agent.” I sent a whole package of my stuff and never heard back.

Oh no!
I think she thought I was a stalker or something.

Does country music inform your work?
Absolutely. Cheatin’ is really a country song. “My baby left me, I want to kill her, I’m going to a bar to pick up women.” It’s a very country-Western style of storytelling. I really want to do a film with all the great ’50s country artists’ music. Hank Williams, Tammy Wynette, George Jones.

Loretta Lynn would be great.
I’d love to do a film full of that music. It would work so well with animation.

I’d love to see you draw Lyle Lovett. He looks like a cartoon already!
His eyes are so tiny, and he’s got that big ‘ol chin. He’d be fun to draw. And I love his music.

Is Kickstarter going to be your regular avenue for putting your work out there?
I’ve done three campaigns. For Cheatin’, we asked for $75,000 and got $100,000, so that was a big success. Now we’re doing Revengeance, and it seems like a perfect way to make a film. It’s a shame I didn’t have this when I was starting out. I’m an independent artist, and I think that appeals to my audience and the Kickstarter people. They want to see me still making films.

It’s quite the community you’ve built.
It is! I go to a lot of my screenings and ask how many people have contributed to the Kickstarter, and usually one or two people will raise their hand.

There are more avenues for independent artists like yourself to reach your audience now than there ever have been. Does that motivate you?
Absolutely. I feel so much more freedom now to make whatever I want. But there’s another issue we should talk about. When I started out making movies, it was all analog. I’d have to get a big camera stand and an operator to shoot all the drawings. It took forever, and it was very expensive. Thank god, now it’s all digital: you put the drawings in the scanner, scan it, and then you can color it on the computer and it’s done. If I see a mistake, I can just go in digitally and change it. Before, I’d have to buy more film and shoot the drawings again. Before, almost 50 percent of the cost went to the technical side of making the film. Now, maybe five percent. The digital revolution really changed my studio setup for the good.

Your art style is so unmistakable. Whenever anyone tries to emulate it, it looks wrong. That’s all you on there.
It is all me. However, I steal from a lot of people. All my career, I take a little bit here and there. Everyone says my style is so unique and different, but I look at it and say, “I ripped off this guy, I ripped off that guy.”

Would you really say you’re ripping them off?
Well, I’d say I’m borrowing.

It’s all filtered through you at the end of the day.
It’s filtered through me and it’s also mixed around with other people’s artwork. It’s about 40% me and 60% other artists. If people say I have a unique look, I’ll accept it. It’s great.

Are there any current animators you could point us to that you think deserve more attention?
Don Hertzfeldt is doing really great stuff. He’s sort of the rock star of animation. Signe Baumane, who did Rocks in My Pockets, is doing interesting things as well. I love Marv Newland’s stuff. Joanna Quinn is a British animator, and she does great stuff.

Pixar makes great movies, and Up is one of my favorites. That opening montage is amazing, but I think a big part of why it garnered so much attention was because it was dealing with adult subject matter in a serious way. I think there needs to be more of that.
I think America’s ready to change its attitude toward animation. It’s ready to grow up. I think Cheatin’ will hopefully be a film that changes the attitude. You need something edgy and fresh and unique.

I think people would love to see a rated-R animated movie.
I see Quentin Tarantino occasionally, and I say, “Hey, let’s do a film together. You write the script and I’ll do the animation. He said, “Yeah! Let’s do it!” I say, “Wanna talk next week?” and he says, “I’m too busy.” He’s got a really full plate.

Do you have a vision of what that movie might look like?
It’d be similar to Cheatin’, but it’d have his flair. His writing is so good. I met him at Sundance back in ’92. He knew all of my movies. He’s a real student of film. I was blown away by his knowledge of animation. In the film Kill Bill, the Uma Thurman character is marrying Mr. Plympton at the beginning of the film. I saw Quentin, and he said, “That’s you, man!”

Bill Plympton’s signature sketchy animated style is wholly unique and decidedly peculiar. Characters are given exaggerated features that appear more unsettling than flattering, and they move within the frame with slow, deliberate, or inhuman motions. Often, portions of the frame are left unfinished or barely detailed, drawing focus to the subject. Cheatin’ maintains the cartoonist’s tradition of weaving a narrative around intriguingly bizarre animations. The film illustrates a couple that falls in love but turns to infidelity, communicating its story without dialog through beautifully ugly sequences.

Cheatin’ opens on Ella, a stick-ish woman in a flowing yellow dress, sun hat, and clacky high heels. She walks through a carnival turning heads and eliciting wry smiles from the men around her, but Ella’s face remains firmly planted in the book she reads. While Ella has the attributes of an attractive figure, Plympton draws her so thin that she’s distressing. Like many of Plympton’s designs, Ella is elegant and yet a little disgusting, a compelling mixture of beauty and the appalling. After Ella has a spat with one of the carnival barkers, she takes a ride on the bumper cars where she literally crashes into Jake.

Jake is all muscle and bone. His beefy chest funnels into a narrow set of abs held in place by a spine. Again, Plympton’s creation is both the idealized version of the masculine form and a frightening, hulking skeleton with skin fastened around it. The barrel-chest hunk winds up saving Ella from death-by-bumper-car-electrocution, and in a brief fantasy sequence later, the couple consummates their new relationship; however, the lingering temptations of infidelity threaten to break Jake & Ella apart.

Plympton packs his film with comedic and symbolic visual gags. One of Ella’s early fantasies has her reveal to Cupid a small heart that she keeps guarded behind an elaborate series of locks in her chest. Another minor aside features a woman at the salon apply a ‘box of bees’ to her lips, swelling them for a fuller look. These silly sequences effectively characterize Plympton’s creations, illustrating thoughts and flashback in place of them stating their conflicts or emotions out loud. Plympton’s characters pantomime or make a variety of grunting noises in place of the dialog, which communicates the intention of each interaction.

Despite the story’s loosely structured, abstract nature, the inciting incident for Jake & Ella’s infidelity amounts to a clichéd misunderstanding. Plots that could theoretically be resolved by a simple, quick discussion between two characters can be extremely frustrating to watch, but Cheatin’ mostly utilizes the recognizable narrative framework as a vehicle for the absorbing animations. Plympton here gets to explore ideas he finds amusing, but the more story-driven the movie becomes, the less unique it seems. The animator’s ability to blend one setting into another is still wonderful to watch, and Cheatin’ is full of these clever set pieces, many of which will draw laughter. Even when familiar, Plympton finds a new element to mine for a joke with the way it’s drawn in Cheatin’.

The animated film remains quite enjoyable by cycling through its plethora of intricately designed illustrations. The frequent funny bits followed by gorgeous compositions that are uncomfortably unnatural create an oddly hypnotizing narrative. The complexity and slow pace might grow tiresome for those who don’t appreciate Bill Plympton’s style, but those who enjoy the filmmaker’s work will find this feature—Plympton’s seventh—a pleasant, intriguing experience.

Cheatin’ opens Friday, April 3rd at Village East in New York City, with a national rollout to follow. The film will be available on Vimeo On Demand starting April 21st.