Hair High

"Hair High" is a full-length Bill Plympton cartoon that is very different from his hilarious shorts. Instead, it's more story-oriented, less funny and a bit padded. Many scenes seem to be drawn out....and the experience is certainly different.

Spud is a new student at the high school. Soon he draws the ire of Rod, the school bully and quarterback of the football team. To punish Spud for existing, Rod forces Spud to be Cherri's slave...and Cherri is Rod's girlfriend. Eventually, however, the plan backfires when Cherri and Spud falls in love and decide to go to the prom together. In response, Rod runs the pair off the road...killing them. While this should be the end of the story, it isn't...and the dead pair are determined to get to the next prom.

Like many of Plympton's cartoons, this one is certainly NOT for kids. It's filled with sexual material and violence...the sort of stuff teens and adults will enjoy but certainly NOT kids! In fact, I talked with Mr. Plympton a few years ago at ComicCon New York, and he said he did NOT want kids watching some of his films. They just can, in some cases, be way too adult for the little ones! It also is a film NOT for the casual viewer, as the material and especially the pacing are not typical of a Plymton cartoon...so I recommend that those not familiar with his work try something else first. Worth seeing despite its pacing...and very, very strange....sort of like the John Waters film "Cry Baby"...but on acid!

I viewed HIGH HAIR today in Los Angeles -- perhaps three years after it was originally screened. Comments on IMDb said it was a retro 50's style high school story line which drew my attention.

I am a child of such an era having graduated in 1959 (at the cusp of the next decade of the 50's) from high school.

I entered the theater with an invited friend. I was a bit anxious whether my experience would be the same as another person's opinion as we left the screening and talked.

We both had the same movie experience: It took about 20 minutes to get into it and at one moment in time, there was a hook that carried the film into its conclusion and enjoyment. I suppose this is a cult film, but it works well with those who were in high school in the era of the film despite the fact that this was not my own experience.

My enjoyment was the fusion of Japanese anime into contemporary American animation as a borrowed skill with a true technique honed by Bill Plimpton.

He pulled it off without a finger print of evidence that would tie him to such a cinematic crime of imitating Japanese Anime and not his own invention.

It worked. Just fine. Pure fusion.

I wonder if Pink Floyd's The Wall animations helped inspire this little animation gem. I wish this had had greater circulation. The Triplets of Belleville comes to mind as well. The story is strange, the animation brimming with nicely realised ideas. I guess you could compare it to Carrie. It's sort of a grand All-American nightmare. I found this movie at an op shop. Another lucky day for me!

Bill Pympton's "Hair High" is everything an animated feature should be. It features some of the funniest comedy you will ever see in a film, animated or live action. This comedy is combined with excellent, unique animation that sets the film apart from other animated features. The rough feeling of it is a much needed break from the perfection that is Disney and Dreamworks. Plympton really proves that you don't need expensive fancy 3D graphics to make an amazing film; all you truly need is talent and ambition. The plot ties everything together; giving some meaning to the crazy world that is Plympton's animation style.

One of the best parts of "Hair High" is the cast of voices. Kill Bill's David Carradine lends his vocal talent, along with Beverly D'Angelo, and Animators Don Hertzfeldt and Matt Groening. Each voice fits the character perfectly, which really adds to the already excellent animation and story.

Overall, the incredibly weird, yet extremely funny, antics of "Hair High" are sure to entertain. Laugh after laugh, this film takes the fun of Plympton's shorts and allows the audience to enjoy the fun for over an hour.

One of the most easily recognisable auteurs working in animation, Bill Plympton has produced a succession of animated features and shorts which delight with their unique style and idiosyncratic world view. His is a bizarre world which, unusually for such hand drawn work, normally assumes the presence of an adult audience and where the exaggerations of sex can be sniggered over for all the right reasons. HAIR HIGH is no exception, and continues the animator's regular obsessions with the strained relationships between sexually optimistic men and women, detailed with black humour all the while laced with some side swipes at the ironies of romance. There's also plenty of hair spray, horny chickens, a good soundtrack, smoking, and the genital stimulation of frogs. Rudeness, surreality and extremes of physical contortion appear again as part and parcel of the plymptonesque world - which this time includes nods to such disparate films as REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and THE CASTLE OF CAGLIOSTRO. HAIR HIGH is voiced by such talent as Keith and David Carradine, Ed Begley Jnr and Matt Groening. Ostensibly a moralistic tale of 50's high school love that ends in comi-tragedy, HAIR HIGH actually engages as a characteristic free wheeling fantasy, allowing the animator to indulge in all sorts of off the wall scenes and images propelling the narrative forward. For those better used to the tight pencil work and plot construction of more regularly exposed animation studios Plympton's work, which leaps more immediately from the artist's bizarre subconscious, often comes as a wake up call. In its attempt to drag cartoons out of the juvenile closet Plympton's longer work has been blazing a trail for years. With not a cuddly, wise-cracking animal in sight and a hands-off view with regards to any computer generated figures, HAIR HIGH is a must for admirers of Plympton. Since this film Plympton has completed two other features, including SHUT EYE HOTEL and, most intriguingly, TOKYO ONLYMPIC, which at 137 mins is slated at his longest yet, double that of the present title.