I Married a Strange Person

A Phoenix pick

Animator Bill Plympton's latest film opens with birds humping in mid air. Along the way, humans hump in bed, a pair of military tanks hump in a field, a woman's nipple rips a man's eye out of its socket, and the Statue of Liberty humps the protagonist. But I Married a Strange Person isn't all about sex -- there's a healthy dose of subversively silly violence and surreal anthropomorphism, too. In this hilarious and visually striking effort, Plympton proves he's at least as strange a person as the title character, not to mention a comic genius.

Our hero, Grant, is exposed to satellite TV radiation, whereupon his imagination begins to come to life all around him, antagonizing his wife but intriguing television magnate Larson Giles, who envisions harnessing Grant's powers to make better shows. The impending battles with the SmileCorp militia take several bizarre twists, as do the myriad unrelated yet gratifying asides. It's all governed by Plympton's strange take on the world -- which has hardly softened since his famous Plymptoons, the series of offbeat shorts that ran on MTV in the late '80s. I Married a Strange Person proves he's just as good at feature length, maybe even better. Casually shocking, wildly imaginative, and laugh-out-loud funny, this is everything South Park wishes it were. Strange is rarely so perfect. Screens at the Copley Place Sunday, September 20 at 5:30, 7:30, and 9:30 p.m.

-- Dan Tobin

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Film Festival Feature Films

| The Witman Boys | The Cruise | Confessions of a Sexist Pig | Melting Pot | Pleasantville | Clay Pigeons | Waking Ned Devine | Blood, Guts, Bullets, & Octane | My Name is Joe | Six Ways to Sunday | The Theory of Flight | A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries | Down in the Delta | Children of Heaven | I Married a Strange Person | 20 Dates | Bandits |

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More Boston Film Festival information, film descriptions, and show times

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