MOVIE REVIEW : An Uneven ‘Animation Invasion’

Alternately dazzling and frustrating, “The British Animation Invasion,” a collection of short films, show reels and commercials opening a two-week run at the Nuart in West Los Angeles today, offers American viewers a look at the work of some of England’s most innovative filmmakers.

Most of the best films in the show are from Aardman Animations in Bristol, whose work has often screened here in the “Animation Celebration” and “Festival of Animation” programs.

“Creature Comforts,” in which a group of animals comment on the conditions in a London zoo, won the Oscar for animated short earlier this week. This hilarious film gets funnier on each successive viewing, as the nuances of expression and gesture of the clay-animated beasts becomes more evident.

In Aardman’s exquisite “Next,” a stop-motion puppet of William Shakespeare auditions for a small-time theatrical producer (a caricature of director Peter Hall). Using a dummy, masks, smaller puppets and other props, the figure of Shakespeare synopsizes 29 of his plays in just 5 1/2 minutes. The screen seems genuinely enchanted during this tour de force of choreography and animation.

Richard Ollive uses traditional cel animation to evoke classic story book illustrations and Winsor McCay’s celebrated comic strip “Little Nemo in Slumberland” in his charming “Night Visitors.” A roly-poly policeman gets pulled into the fantasy world of “Peter Pan” in this gentle film that offers the visual equivalent of a lullaby,

It’s no coincidence that the weakest films in the “Invasion” are also the most pretentious. In “Door,” David Anderson tries to re-create the dark fantasy worlds of the Brothers Quay and Jan Svankmajer, but he lacks the necessary eye for the resonant image. “Door” amounts to little more than a tedious catalogue of stop-motion techniques. Paul Vester mixes drawn animation with computer effects and photographs in “Picnic,” an unfocused multimedia parable of ecological disaster that remains less than the sum of its parts.

At 105 minutes, “The British Animation Invasion” lasts longer than “The Little Mermaid” and would benefit from some judicious trimming: Sitting through so many commercials and show reels designed to grab the viewer’s attention gets a bit taxing. But works like “Next” and “Night Visitors” that demonstrate the special capability of animation to create magic on the screen more than compensate for the weaker films.

“The British Animation Invasion” continues at the Nuart Theatre, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Los Angeles, through April 11. Information: (213) 479-5269.