MOVIE REVIEW : An Uneven Celebration of Animated Short Films

Although animation is enjoying an unprecedented boom in the United States, “The Third Animation Celebration,” a collection of international shorts opening today at selected theaters, suggests that the most interesting and imaginative personal films are being produced in Europe. These serious, intensely individual works offer alternative visions of what animation can be.

The haunting “Darkness, Light, Darkness” (Czechoslovakia), a stop-motion film by Jan Svankmajer, presents a bitter metaphor for the new political freedom in Eastern Europe. A pair of exquisitely sculpted clay hands laboriously assemble a human body, but when the newly created man awakens, he discovers he’s imprisoned in a tiny room, like Alice in the White Rabbit’s house.

Overtones of political satire add zest to “Welcome” (Soviet Union), Alexei Karaev’s adaptation of the Dr. Seuss story “Thidwick the Big- Hearted Moose.” Various animals, including a family of squirrels and a small bear, take up residence in the amiable Thidwick’s antlers; the animals begin as guests, but soon demand the right to decide where their host can and can’t go. Karaev gives this handsome paint-on-glass film a gentle ending that lacks the ironic bite of the original children’s book.

Peter Lord’s “War Story” (Great Britain) satirizes the current nostalgia for World War II. Subtle clay animation mirrors the exaggerations of a doddering old gent’s reminiscences about life in London during the Blitz, including a night spent “in the coal bin with the missus, her mum and the dog.”

George Griffin pokes fun at the constantly changing whims of ad agency staffs in “New Fangled” (United States), an agreeable, if light, work from one of America’s foremost independent animators. Randy Bauer spoofs John Lasseter’s popular “Luxo Jr.” in “Lava Jr.” (United States), a skillful parody using computer animation of a ‘60s Lava Light.

Not all the American films approach this level of imagination and skill. Bill Plympton’s “The Wiseman” repeats the scribbly drawings and metamorphic animation he’s used since “Your Face” (1987), although the style has lost its novelty. John Kricfalusi tries much too hard to evoke the mayhem of the classic Tex Avery shorts in “Ren Hoek and Stimpy in ‘Big House Blues,’ ” a frenetic work that wears out its welcome long before 8 1/2 minutes have elapsed.

The clips of “Dr. N!godatu”, made by the Klasky-Csupo studio for the first season of “The Tracey Ullman Show,” reveal the wisdom of dumping this pseudo-hip inanity and keeping “The Simpsons.” Things hit rock bottom with “Snowie and Seven Dorps” by Candy Kugel and Vince Cafarelli, which repeats the clunky designs, stiff animation and colored-line-on-black-background look of their recent “Warm Welcome in L.A.” An amateurish exercise in graphic ineptitude, “Snowie” amounts to a long whine by a pair of wanna-bes at the failure of the entertainment industry to appreciate their mediocre talents.

“The Third Animation Celebration” runs for two weeks only at the Nuart in West Los Angeles, the Town & Country in Encino, the Balboa Cinema in Newport Beach and the Rialto in Pasadena.