Some movies are content material to current the world as it’s. Others take nice enjoyment of creating their very own little universe. Julian Glander’s Boys Go to Jupiter falls into the latter class, turning Floridian suburbia right into a land of dreamy computer-animated science fiction.
Boys is essentially a coming-of-age story, a few sixteen-year-old high-school dropout named Billy 5000 who’s hustling on a food-delivery app to make, nicely, $5,000. However it stretches far past that by additionally being about all of the odd little people he encounters alongside the way in which. There’s one thing of a concrete plot right here, that includes bizarre alien-like creatures and orange juice-producing scientists. However that throughline falls to the wayside in favor of vignettes at any time when we meet a brand new character.
Boys Go to Jupiter
3
/5
- Launch Date
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June 7, 2024
- Runtime
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90 minutes
- Director
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Julian Glander
- Writers
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Julian Glander
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Tavi Gevinson
Miss Sharon / Minivan Mother (voice)
Because the movie goes on, it appears like Glander is comfy taking part in together with his toys — gorgeously designed to seem like vinyl figures that may transfer— somewhat than permitting any of the movie’s themes or narrative beats to actually land. Boys Go to Jupiter continually oscillates between a coherent little bit of slice-of-life storytelling and sequences that really feel extra like Grownup Swim bumpers or shorts (of which Glander has directed lots), one thing that no quantity of colourful animation can disguise. And, to be clear, it is fantastically designed from high to backside, creating the type of minimalist world that you may stare at for hours and nonetheless discover new, cute particulars (or just get excessive and recognize).
The vignettes that populate Boys Go to Jupiter are each charming and tiresome, and generally come throughout as extra akin to a sketch from a comic’s stand-up routine. The presence of performers like Cole Escola, Julio Torres, Joe Pera and Sarah Sherman (amongst many others) ought to come as no shock, given the whimsical tone of the movie; in any case, it’s mainly simply an ensemble of bizarre little individuals doing bizarre little voices and characters. These performances are sometimes charming, generally forgettable, and generally really feel in direct dialog with these performers’ personal work, all the way down to Escola taking part in an older girl and Torres having a number of jokes in unsubtitled Spanish. Torres’ dwelling dioramas are the closest instance to what Glander accomplishes right here, however the place Torres’ concepts are sometimes succinctly explored in his materials, Glander attracts them out to the purpose of being nonsensical.
There’s something to be stated about a few of these bite-sized bits of creativeness, although. It’s simple to get misplaced in sure conditions and characters that populate this unspecified nook of Florida, as lots of the quirky characters — from an alien that critiques totally different restaurant meals to an previous woman who believes mini-golf balls are eggs — tease at how a lot potential a sandbox like this may supply, however it all begins feeling a bit twee after some time. By the point the fourth or fifth musical interlude rolls round, be it in a Sims-like unintelligible language or simply musically accompanying a montage, it’s laborious to not marvel if Glander was padding a lot of brief movie concepts right into a characteristic.
The connective tissue by way of all that is, somewhat amusingly, capitalism, all the way down to characters actually stepping into mild discussions about how “capitalist dichotomies exist all over the place” and blatantly showcasing the way it poisons even one of the best intentions. Boys has much less of an affect when it succumbs to musing out loud about these items than when it depicts them by way of its vignettes, a lot of which serve to emphasise the damaging nature of the “grind” or “hustle” mindset that has poisoned its protagonist.
Boys Go To Jupiter additionally serves as one thing of a distinction to this 12 months’s No Sleep Until, leaning right into a sure type of “weirdness” versus that movie’s comparatively lifelike method to Florida ennui. There is a kind of timeless magnificence to Glander’s world, which exists in a No Man’s Land of time and house. (On this case, there’s no hurricane, or any type of grander energy, to dictate time.) However somewhat than use that to flesh out the world, he depends on gimmicks and gags as a substitute of any ounce of emotional development. A few of these jokes land, others don’t, and it’ll finally come all the way down to the comedian sensibilities of the viewer itself.
As Glander’s movie retains mulling alongside, one has to query whether or not or not one thing like Boys Go to Jupiter would work greatest as disjointed shorts like Glander’s personal Tennis Ball on His Day Off or I Journey My Bike When The Air Is Crispy, versus a characteristic that feels drawn out at 90 minutes. Its imaginative ambiance has an plain attract, and it’ll undoubtedly be one thing of a calling card for Glander’s model of animation, however finally it is little extra than simply nice viewing. Possibly that shall be sufficient for some, however with the limitless potential of his animation, it’s a disgrace there isn’t extra than simply frivolity right here.
Boys Go to Jupiter opens August 8 in New York from Cartuna and Irony Level, with a nationwide growth to observe.