Animation mastermind Adam Elliot’s adult absurdist film is a droll, stylistic comic vision that’s anything but conventional. 
Audiences familiar with “Wallace & Gromit” will adapt easily to Elliot’s painstakingly detailed clay world orchestrated with thought-bubbles, catchy musical themes, and spot-on vocal performances.
The story is about a couple of unlikely pen pals — Max (Philip Seymour Hoffman) suffers from Asperger syndrome and lives in Manhattan circa ’76, and Mary (Toni Collette) is a lonely 8-year-old girl living in Australia.
The movie comes at you like a kaleidoscope collage of neuroses, fears, and misunderstandings.
Deaths and near-suicides are narrative colors that Elliot paints with a scatological brush — there are so many poo references that you’d think “Max and Mary” was a Korean film.
A narrator (Barry Humphries) adds another gear for our mutual protagonists’ inner thoughts as they age across a decade that finds Mary getting married, and Max grappling with his many obsessions.
“Mary and Max” is a highly inventive claymation tragicomedy told from a very personal perspective.
It’s not intended to be everyone’s cup of bittersweet tea.
Yum.
Not Rated. 92 mins.
