Animated ‘Strange Person’ Is Rambling, Raunchy Trip

The moral of “I Married a Strange Person,” Bill Plympton’s adult feature-length cartoon, is perfectly clear: Know that if you have a satellite dish and happen to be watching TV when some lovemaking ducks crash into it, you’re in for some bizarre, kinky adventures.

No wonder suburban newlywed Kerry Boyer feels she married a strange person. Her husband, Grant, a Clark Kent look-alike--he even has a flash of himself as Superman--having been watching TV at just the wrong time, has wound up with a lobe at the back of his neck, which causes him to develop supernatural powers that automatically turn anything he thinks or imagines into reality. When his sour mother-in-law expresses her distaste for bugs, for example, they start popping out of her various orifices. And when it comes to lovemaking, bewildered Kerry exclaims, “Damn it, Grant! When I have sex with you, I want to have it with you alone!”

While ingenious and clever, “I Married a Strange Person,” which marks Plympton’s feature debut, never really develops much of a rhythm or becomes all that involving or hilarious and is therefore best left to animation fans. Plympton’s drawing style is simple and unpretentious, resulting in nicely textured graphics. His film is also graphic in the sexual sense but stays on the far side of porn in that its sex fantasies are too grotesque to be erotic, except for its amusingly suggestive early sequence in which Kerry is trying to lure her husband away from his desk and into their bedroom.

Grant’s amazing powers, while wreaking havoc on his marriage, not surprisingly get him booked on a talk show as a magician, where a media magnate, the head of the magnate’s private army and even a fading Vegas comedian, also a show guest, all want to get their hands on Grant’s magical lobe. Their stop-at-nothing efforts send Grant off on a series of surreal, less-than-thrilling adventures that constitute the bulk of the 72-minute film.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: It includes some blunt, adults-only sex sequences, considerable cartoon violence.

‘I Married a Strange Person’

Voice of Grant Boyer: Tom Larson

Voice of Kerry Boyer: Charis Michelsen

Produced, animated and directed by Bill Plympton. Camera John Donnelly. Editor Anthony Arcidi. Backgrounds by Greg Pair, Graham Blyth. Running time: 1 hour, 12 minutes.

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* Exclusively at the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West L.A., (310) 478-6379. Ends Thursday.