It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

While I have long enjoyed Bill Plympton's short films, I have been left cold by his features. That is until Idiots and Angels came along.The movie is completely free of dialogue and this combined with Bill Plympton's trademark surreal images gives the movie hypnotic quality. I have to say, after all the fuss that was made about the first 30 minutes of the mediocre Wall-E, you would think an animated movie that is without any dialogue at would be declared the greatest thing since sliced bread by the movie going public. Who knows? That may happen, but I doubt it.I'm pretty sure this movie is only playing festivals right now, but, if you have a chance to check it out I highly recommend that you do so.

If you're new to Plympton world you may be not at home with the language, but I'm sure you'll fall into it throughout the first 20 minutes or so. The fact is I left the cinema with a lot of words in my mind only to learn soon after that the movie is in fact wordless. It didn't feel like that at all. The images are so expressive that the story is perfectly conveyed by their sharp meaning... Illusory as ever Plympton delves ever more deeper and clearer through the imaginary of the human psyche. This is humanity in a nutshell if you will. Plympton takes its pulse on the world along with some great music that further compliments the drawings' edge... Plympton has matured to become a refined groundbreaking animator that will mark cinematic animation for years to come.

Idiots and Angels is a film by long time animator and Oscar nominee Bill Plympton. The film is completely without dialogue, relying on characters actions and fantasies to tell the story. It opens with our anti-hero 'Angel' waking up, shaving, showering and having his breakfast. He drives through the bustling traffic and blows up a car that takes his parking space, then heads to a seedy bar. The bar is populated by the surly landlord, his beautiful, neglected wife and a rather rotund woman sitting in the corner. Angel orders a drink and puffs away on his cigarettes until a cocoon in his hair suddenly gives birth to a butterfly. In their own way each character expresses how they feel - The landlord wants to capture the butterfly and use it to generate business, the fat lady wants to have the natural beauty of the thing and be worshiped by men, the wife would like to soar above the heavens on it's back. Angel? He wants to smash it. Angel is a bad man and his routine is simple: drink, sell guns and smoke cigarettes.One morning he wakes up to discover two small bones sticking out of his back which he manages to cut off with his razor, but the bones are persistent and have soon grown into fully functioning wings. Visiting a back doctor with ideas of his own and delusions of fame, Angel flees and finds himself literally being forced by the wings to do good and to change his ways. While his 'friends' initially humiliate him for his new abnormality, they soon grow envious and decide they want some for themselves.Idiots and Angels is a beautiful animation with striking imagery and a unique ability to change it's tone and message in a heartbeat. What starts off as a comment on banality turns into a noir-ish thriller then transforms into a morality tale before surging head on into romance. It's also a superhero film. And a comedy. Just as the animation morphs with wildly inventive transitions so does the story and pace. Plymton has an excellent eye for imaginative and outrageous imagery and often one is uncertain if what we are seeing is really happening or just in the characters mind, for instance one scene has Angel riding the landlord's wife around the bar like a horse while Tom Wait's sings in the background. The soundtrack as well as the visuals has a lot to do, essentially making up one half of the experience and it just shines with some great choices of both classical and contemporary pieces.Basically I think everyone should see this film. It's a serious accomplishment and I think that Plympton should win his first long deserved Oscar for it. I first became aware of his work when I tuned into late night television aged fifteen and had my mind blown by 'I Married a Strange Person!', his surreal 1997 feature. With Idiots and Angels he has kept the same humour and outrageousness and built on the style to add a heavy emotional air that made me begin to really care about the characters and their fate.

In the unit on Self in the Intro Philosophy course that I teach, we talk about the difficulties of imagining the cognition of lesser species, because all animals besides humans don't think in words. This is loosely analogous to seeing a Bill Plympton film, devoid of dialogue as all his works are. For the first 20 minutes, I am enthralled, but by a half an hour in, the continually morphing figures and the animated viscera blur into a soupy blend it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain focus on. I spend the last half of the film slipping in and out of consciousness, enjoying what I see and not all that fussed about missing out on the continuity, because what there is tying the various scenes together is almost entirely subjective anyway.In a way, Plympton's works are immensely impressive, giving one an effect akin to witnessing a 90-minute Salvador Dali painting continually in flux before your eyes. The man undoubtedly has a fertile imagination. Limiting yourself to images only, how do you even plan out a storyline? Does he write out the stories in words and then draw pictures to match the ideas? Or does he just block them out in image-form only? Does he say to himself: "Ok, then the guy morphs into an ant and the ant envisions himself dancing with the lady in the bar, and then the bar turns into a skip being tossed about on the ocean, and then we pan back and we see that the ocean is just inside the man's head"? Or does he just draw it without any explanation and see where it takes him? Perhaps, though, to paraphrase Kierkegaard (or was it Dick Van Patten?), "to define him is to negate him". Just enjoy the visuals - it's a fun ride.