"Male Games" or "Manly Games" is a more ambitious piece of animation from filmmaker Jan Svankmajer, largely due to its premise. Rather than relying completely on claymation or stop-motion, the film combines three different techniques into one fourteen-minute film: live action, cartoon animation, and stop-motion. The combining of these three techniques, for a 1988 short, is obviously not going to be perfect in terms of visual continuity, but Svankmajer does about the best he can, and there is certainly no criticizing it entirely because of this. In fact, the film remains a fun one to see because of its dark sense of humor, combined with a subtle yet apparent social commentary.
The setup involves a man entering his apartment and sitting down before his TV to watch football (soccer). As the game begins, the viewer sees that the goal of the game is not to make goals but to literally murder as many opponents as possible. Every time a player is killed, using some sort of crazy method, they are dragged off while the crowds cheer and the man (who by the way plays all the players) guzzles more beer and cookies. An amusing finale follows.
Overall, it's an amusing film with plenty of dark comedy, even if the combination of techniques isn't perfect. The shots of the crowd are in black and white and probably stock footage, while the cartoon animation on the field is color and clearly not live action. But the stop-motion is superb, and the deaths are comical if dark, with lots of creativity involved in each one. As other reviewers have already said, the short seems to be creating a commentary on the brutality of sports, in a hilariously exaggerated fashion. Not the strongest Svankmajer effort, but among the more amusing shorts he made.
