E-Mail This Article to a Friend MERCANO, EL MARCIANO/MERCANO THE MARTIAN

Remember Planète sauvage/Fantastic Planet? René Laloux’s trippy, Crayola-bright animated tale of life on other planets and the cerebral sex lives of beings who enslaved humans was an eyebrow-raising allegory of contemporary mores circa 1973. Argentine animator Juan Antin has crafted a similarly surreal story about a homesick extraterrestrial who befriends a computer nerd that manages to comment upon Argentina’s current financial distress as well as technophilia and global consumerism. The two unlikely pals create a Web site that becomes popular and thus a target for a corporate takeover. Scenes where Mercano tries to log onto an undependable Internet are hilarious. Aside from a short interlude of CGI-wrought footage, this oddly charming and often giddily irreverent film harks back to the old-fashioned animation of yesteryear — which is to say, it looks like what the stoners were watching before it all got so sick and twisted. The art direction and the characters are disturbingly cute, with heads like lima beans and eggplants and voices like clogged plumbing or whirring machinery. Don’t blink or you’ll miss the apocalyptic ending. In Spanish with English subtitles. (72 minutes)