'The Broken Jaw' is a funny cartoon, that tells its story in four tableaux. In the first two, we meet the regulars of the Broken Jaw, one of those old-fashioned, nose-bleeding kind of working class pubs where men are men even if they're senile, crippled or women. It's a relentless cycle of booze, violence and expulsion, a reassuringly familiar pattern giving meaning to otherwise lonely people's lives.
This cycle is broken in the third tableau, however, when the regulars turn up and find their beloved haunt has turned into a ghastly karaoke bar full of young thugs. These may seem to be sneering reincarnations of themselves, but the difference is highlighted in their respective karaoke sessions. The young turks offer perfunctory imitations of rock greats that never transcend those greats; the old-timers turn their tuneless howling into a glorious, multi-coloured fantasy-world, where time and space become liberatingly fluid, a kind of visual equivalent to the Beatles' 'A Day in the Life'. The youngsters throw them out.
This theme of change, of being left behind, is emphasised by the pub's environment: initially part of a communal whole, a recognisable terraced milieu; in the third part it is in an empty space, any sense of roots or connectedness gone, the jaw broken. This is the difference between post-modernist imitation and established conformity. The fourth tableau offers a further, hilarious twist.
'The Broken Jaw' is itslf something of a post-modern artifact, ironising the film's apparent theme; it's an inspired jumbling of animation modes and photography reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's Monty Python drawings - grotty, evocative, fantastic, but always tied to the plausible.
