MY ENTIRE HIGH SCHOOL
SINKING INTO THE SEA
(directed by Dash Shaw, 2016)
*** (out of 5)
*
> Animator Dash Shaw made this colorful, kinetic animated disaster flick using “limited animation” techniques to good effect.
. There is a strong graphic design here that is not sophisticated, but is involving. It’s colorful, and it moves.
. Dash casts an avatar for himself in the central role: as a high school sophomore active on the campus newspaper that nobody pays any attention to unless he writes something sensational- like a story about haunted lockers, or something lurid, like a nasty expose of his feuding friend’s imaginary erectile dysfunction. Sneaking into an off-limits area to do some research, Dash discovers that the new addition to the school was built against code on an unstable cliffside. Engineers project disaster, when the weight of the new building causes the cliff to fall into the sea, but the whole thing has been covered up by the school principal. (Shades of Trump and the Caronavirus pandemic!) Dash rings the alarm loud and clear- but nobody is listening. Nobody ever listens- until it is too late.
. What happens is right there in the title. When an earthquake triggers collapse, the whole student body finds themselves inside a building that is quickly filling with seawater, and the only way out is up- to the forbidden senior floor. But will his classmates listen to Dash this time? Don’t be silly. I told you: nobody ever listens to a teenager.
– Fun. Not greatness, but fun.
*
© Kevin Paul Keelan and lastcre8iveiconoclast, 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kevin Paul Keelan and lastcre8iveiconoclast with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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