Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: SNOTTY BOY [Annecy Animation Festival 2021 -Virtual]
The aspect of art and an artist is always at the crux of perspective. "Snotty Boy" [Feature Competition/World Premiere], the first full length animated film in this medium out of Austria, knows its tone right out of the box. Albeit it is a little weird but it is all its own. Its characters have a grotesque and yet lived-in feel about them, completely angled into their own skin. The progression comes from the mind of late cartoonist with a cult following Manfred Deix. The film follows a tween (for better use of the word) named "Snotty Boy" who is buried in his local town yet with immense talent in his drawings. He can bring out the lewd in some ways but also the reality of those around him. Between the aspects of school, his friends trying to exploit his talent and his war-wounded father trying to keep the local inn just above water, Snotty Boy is just trying to see who he is.
He becomes smitten with a gypsy girl and while he muddles everything up mostly along the way (with some cheap laughs to boot), there are moments when the directors {Santiago Lopez Jover & Marcus H. Rosenmuller) really hit it correctly. A moment between the artist and his gypsy girl is played exactly right and the resulting musical interlude (in a way) actually of all things harks to "West Side Story" with a punk undercurrent. The ending in many ways is simply bonkers, out there and the material is definitely not for regular viewing audiences in a way but it reaffirms the aspect that you can't keep a good artist down and life has a funny way of working out. B
By Tim Wassberg
