"The narrative is hip and the dialogue very intelligent"

Advances in technology have made animated films more and more lifelike. At times, it is difficult to tell the animation from the live action—see “The Chronicles of Narnia” where the Lion looked almost indistinguishable. But such advances are often at the expense of the story, and as good as these films look, the overall effect is frequently unsatisfying.

Writer/director Jim Connell is, no doubt, aware of the problems associated with animated films that attempt to draw in adult viewers. His new short film, “Saul Goodman,” utilizes jerky video game like animation to deliver an interesting take on several interwoven stories. After adjusting to his animation choices, I really got into this adult cartoon.

The action starts in a rail station in Boston. Two men, one older dressed in a tuxedo, the other a young student, have missed their train and wait for another to arrive. On television screens in the station, news reports feature breaking news of a maniac who’s mowed down a police officer and several pedestrians with his car. Now surrounded by police, a standoff is underway. Inside the rail station, the two men carry on a conversation about the events on television and politics. The older man is quite a story-teller relating war stories of his life on the campaign trail where he worked with a Senator now in line to make a White House run. The conversation turns edgy quick as we learn that the Senator has more than one skeleton in his closet. And the young student might know more than he’s letting on. But, no matter, “It’S-All-GOOD-MAN!”

At 27 minutes, this film works. The narrative is hip and the dialogue very intelligent. The stories told are dramatized in an exciting way and cast a dark shadow on the two men waiting on their train. Pulling no punches, there is sex, language, and violence; this isn’t your typical Saturday morning cartoon. While clearly appealing to animation fans and comic book/video game types, I think that the draw for “Saul Goodman” could extend beyond this core. The reason is the strength of the story-telling. So often, the visuals of animated films are praised and comments about the weak stories are pushed deep into the review.

At some point, critics are going to talk about both the visual and the subject matter equally. Note that last year, I gave the barely released film “Renaissance” three stars, although I warned that the story just couldn’t maintain interest over its feature running time (the number of people walking out at the Toronto International Film Festival screening was significant). With “Goodman,” Connell smartly restricts the length of his film so as to emphasize the critical plot and action points instead of stretching out such elements in order to artificially reach feature length. Such padding weighs down an initially good idea. Such is the dilemma facing filmmakers seeking to make an animated feature film for adult audiences.

Although I’m not sure how Connell began his “Goodman” project, it looks like he started with the story first. This is how it should be—script then casting. And given the technological options available to filmmakers, animation should be more and more on the table. And while a good script can be damaged by bad casting decisions, choosing animation over live action can also have a dampening effect. Not all scripts lend themselves to being animated. And as audiences get more and more accustomed to paying good money to watch “cartoons” on the big screen, they have become more demanding, desiring good stories combined with superior visuals.

Connell’s decision to choose an obviously video game inspired look placed more emphasis on the story. Instead of concentrating on the WOW factors associated with the animation techniques, we listen to what’s happening and to character development. Perhaps, seamless, indistinguishable graphic look strived for in so many modern computer generated films have created a dependency resulting in green-lighting bad scripts. Animation will simply not survive without more good writing.