Tune (DVD)

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A blurb on the cover of "Bill Plympton´s The Tune," subtitled "an outrageous animated comedy extravaganza," features none other than Matt Groening, creator of "The Simpsons." Groening gushes, "It would make Bart Simpson laugh his ass off."

Ironically, what would appeal most to the Bartman is an extended nonsensical nonsequitor of a section that depicts two men in suits squaring off against each other, Itchy & Scratchy style. Like the sadistic cartoon cat and mouse that tickles Bart´s funnybone, they do such things as tie the other´s ears together in front of the face and then load the rubbery sling with a boulder that knocks the head right off, or molding the other´s face into a baseball and then hitting a decapitating home run. Yep, Bart would laugh his little yellow buttocks off, but this violent sequence has little to do with the slender plot strand that connects the animated musical episodes in Plympton´s first full-length effort, released in 1992.

Plympton, an independent animator, has a style as rough and sketchy as Groening´s debut comic strip, "Life in Hell," which was widely syndicated in college newspapers. Like Groening´s, his characters look like hastily scribbled drawings. They're brought to life using one-quarter animation, with rough shading lines on the characters and their clothing drawn irregularly, so that they appear to pulsate continuously, like strobe lights. Backgrounds are minimalist, and transitions? What are those? Though Plympton is no artist or animator extraordinaire, his cartoon shorts have found an appreciative audience because of the wacky mind-trip quality they have, a sensibility that hearkens back to the Sixties. Just as Groening clicked with college students in print, Plympton connected with the I-can´t-wait-until-spring-break crowd when his short animated features (with such titles as "How to Make Love to a Woman," "Nose Hair," "25 Ways to Quit Smoking," and "More Sex and Violence") aired on MTV.

"The Tune," with its constant morphing of figures and landscapes, echoes The Beatles´ full-length animated "Yellow Submarine" (1968). "Yellow Submarine" had a thin plot (The Beatles try to save Peppertown from the Blue Meanies) that was basically an excuse to string together a series of songs. It was an animated music video, and that´s what Plympton has crafted. The ten songs take center stage.

In "The Tune," Del, a schlep of a songwriter, is stuck on a master-work that he´s under pressure to write for Mega Music. They give him 47 minutes to write a hit song, or lose his job. Plus, he wants to marry Didi, a secretary at Mega Music, but with a creative block the size of a pick-up truck weighing him down, he gets depressed. While driving his car he passes a "Yiiikes!" caution sign and ends up on one tangled spaghetti bowl of a freeway exchange, after which his car morphs into a series of odd vehicles until it finally disappears. The next sign reads "Entering Flooby Nooby," which turns out to be a rhymer´s and singer´s paradise. None other than the mayor decides to give him a tour. "You think too much to write a great song," he tells Del. "You´ve got to feel all the emotions. Follow me, son, I´ll show you what I mean."

Lesson one involves the "myth" of perspective, and trees get smaller, not bigger as Del and the mayor approach. We follow Del as he goes from place to place inside Flooby Nooby and meets characters who break into song with the ease with which one breathes. Del is impressed, and jots down notes (i.e., STEALS lines and ideas). Inside Dot´s Diner, for example, a dishwater blonde launches into a country love song while the music video morphing continues as a piece of bacon hugs a fried egg and a hot dog and bun run through a field of flowers to get to each other. And it´s on to a guru ("Oh please, wise man, tell me how to write the perfect song!"), where he´s told to discover the purity of perfection, not the perfection of purity. Deep, huh? Head morphs, ears morph, and poor Del says, "I didn´t understand a thing he said." Del also encounters an Elvis-impersonating dog, a bellhop who sings to him at the Love Sick Hotel, and a taxi driver who does a bluesy ballad while a bottle-slide guitar is shown doing its own thing and lyrics pop up on-screen with a bouncing ball that´s so pliable it keeps changing shape, like the wax in a lava lamp, as it lands on the letters. And there´s a stylish couple doing the tango, morphing into different body types and geometrical shapes as the music changes shape. Put any of these small sections on a cartoon short and the audience would mutter to themselves, "clever," or "weird." But hilarious they´re not, and they don´t function well enough strung together under this weak premise because of the rough quality of animation and drawing and the minimalist background and plot.