MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Trousers’ Is Best Fit in Animation Fest

“Wrong Trousers,” a 28-minute British short screening as part of “Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation” at the Edwards Mesa Cinema through Nov. 11, offers further proof that Nick Park ranks among the best clay animators of his generation.

“Trousers” continues the adventures of Wallace, the gentle, addled inventor, and his resourceful dog, Gromit, from Park’s Oscar-nominated “It’s a Grand Day Out.” A cash shortage forces them to take in a lodger--a suspicious-looking penguin who leads them into a spoof of film noir detective stories. Wallace and Gromit may not enchant audiences the way the lisping Brazilian jaguar did in Park’s Academy Award-winning “Creature Comforts,” but they’re an appealing team.

The rest of the “Festival” is a problematic mixed bag that rarely attains Park’s level of excellence. Barry Purves’ previously reviewed “Screen Play” (England) remains an exquisite stop-motion evocation of a Kabuki tragedy. Joan Gratz’s “Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase” (United States), which beat “Screen Play” for the Oscar earlier this year, is a technical tour de force: Gratz uses streaks of clay on glass to transform a series of famous 20th-Century paintings into each other. But the pacing and the lack of personal comment reduce the film to an empty exercise--it’s like watching your college art history book morph.

“Crossroads” (Germany) by Raimund Krumme depicts four men struggling to cross an intersection that keeps turning in space. It’s easy--perhaps too easy--to see this unsettling film as a political comment. Tinsely Galyean and Steven N. Drucker caricature American politicians with computer-generated balloons in “Self-Inflated” (U.S.).

The visually striking computer film “Infrared Roses Revisited” (U.S.) by Justin Kreutzmann and Gillian Grisman brings Jerry Garcia’s skull-and-lightning-bolt album cover to life--which probably seems worth doing to Dead Heads, but viewers with other musical tastes may wonder why the artists went to so much bother to move trite imagery.

The student films don’t feel ready for prime time--or for Saturday morning. “N’cest Pas” (U.S.) by Sherie Pollack combines weak drawings with yet another lame spoof of Hollywood. The cutouts in Walter Santucci’s “Jean Jean and the Evil Cat” (U.S.) don’t move, and the narrator’s pseudo-French accent borders on an ethnic slur.

For Beavis and Butt-head fans, there are snot jokes (“Tennis” by Peter Hixson and Jim MacAyeal), make-fun-of-the-handicapped jokes (“No Neck Joe” by Craig McCracken and “Brian’s Brain” by Miles Thompson) and dog-humping-everything-in-sight jokes (Sean Mullen’s “Horndog”). The gross shorts may alienate general audiences who might otherwise want to see “Wrong Trousers.”

* “Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation” continues through Nov. 11 at the Edwards Mesa Cinema, 1884 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa, in tandem with a program of “Sick and Twisted” films. See the Orange County Movie Guide, F3, for screening times or call (714) 646-5025.