Also rented (via iTunes) the, if nothing else, curiously titled My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea. It’s an animated teen comedy/satire set in a high school that, due to an earthquake, has slipped into the ocean and is slowly sinking. As happens.
This film is an odd duck, that’s for sure. The animation is very simplistic (almost amateurish) and slips slowly into trippy psychedelia as the story and the disaster progresses. The humor is very detached irony, a little hipper-than-thou at times. I did laugh at various points but it overall didn’t work on me like it might for others. I gather the film is meant to be a satire of big budget action and disaster movies but that didn’t come through very well. Yes, the high school is sinking and the survivors have to climb to higher and higher floors (based on grade level) in order to stay ahead of the flood and there are certain tropes that get mocked but it doesn’t seem to be a focus of the flick.
The voice cast includes some name-brand actors. Jason Schwartzman, on loan from an equally ironic Wes Anderson film, plays one of the main characters. He’s joined by Lena Dunham, Maya Rudolph, and Susan Sarandon as the lunch lady. They all do a fine job. The dialog is very detached irony that generally wanders around philosophical ideas semi-related to, you know, the entire high school sinking into the sea… but it’s the nature of the movie to only off-handedly be too concerned about that (even as tiny sharks eat other students or people plummet to their death as the school flounders in the sea).
I generally was kind of bored with this film. I didn’t find it as funny as they did and the satire of big budget disaster films was limited. I guess if you like experimental, low budget scrappy little somethings, you might dig the movie if you can get into its detached sense of humor. I appreciate the effort and what they pulled off given an apparently low budget. I just wish I enjoyed it more.
Score: 70