REVIEW...

Super-mom doesn't fly
"My tongue's stuck!"
"Stuck where?"

Stuck where, indeed. So begins, Super-mom, the new animated film by lumbering narcoleptic Matthew Lively. The first line, spoken by Super-mom's megacephalic boy, Rashin, is an apt summation of one's first reaction to the film: you feel like your tongue's stuck, but you're not sure where.

An unseemly mish-mash of oddly Freudian conflict, the film's a sort of Disney psychodrama incorporating Oedipal dynamics, disease and family values. Like a Cronenberg adaptation of the Sophisticats, the film mixes the grossly personal and psychopathological (Super-mom is a turgid, spurting hot-water bottle with hypertrophic gams) with the goofy gag sense of the cartoon set (see the above description of Super-mom). The result is an entertaining introduction to neuroses for those as yet unscarred by therapy.

Super-mom revolves around the daily life of Super-mom, Rashin and Girl, the descriptively named girl-child of our heroine. Super-mom is at war with the forces of evil ever a-lurk in her neighborhood, threatening her precious if creepy boy. All the while she neglects the cipher-like Girl who sits numbly begging her momma's attentions. Other characters include a lame, potentially pedophiliac Elvis impersonator (from Chicago) whose comical menace serves as counterpoint to Super-mom's fastidious do-goodery, and a fly that may or may not be a figment of Rashin's warped imagination. Our characters are plagued throughout by beecycles - buzzing unicycle/bee hybrids- natural disaster's, and Rashin's disturbing early onset puberty.
The film's most touching sequence occurs sometime near the middle when the fly inexplicably sprouts the head of Abe Lincoln and drives the unstable Rashin into a near frenzy with a dramatic recitation of the Gettysburg address. Rashin, thrown into a sexual mania by the great emancipator's rhetorical flourishes, grips one of the ubiquitous antique fans and, shrieking a gut-wrenching Whitesnake medley, waltzes lasciviously around the playground. The bad Elvis impersonator, who'd been gorging himself in the watermelon patch adjacent to the school, is drawn to the singing and the two engage in a charged duet of late eighties hair metal ballads. Indeed, every rose has it's thorn and Super-mom, in pursuit of a marauding swarm of beecycles, soon stumbles across the pair. In a slo-mo battle reminiscent of later Peckinpah the Elvis impersonator is soundly doused by a single ded-eyed squirt from Super-mom's rubbery nozzle. Rashin collapses exhausted, a conflicted heap. The fly buzzes off grumbling incoherently. An approaching twister, though, prevents Super-mom and Rashin from ever addressing the issues so apparent in this scenario, though there is some weak resolution of 'family-ties will bind' variety. Who isn't put in mind of their own adolescent tribulations by this all too familiar situation?

Aside from this masterful passage, though, the film never coheres into the grin-inducing coming of age Twin Peaks it seems intended to be. Lively's desire to create a film that addresses the issues of family, adolescence and pedophilia with an entertaining allegorical elan never really gels leaving us asking more questions than it answers, particularly, 'Did I turn the stove off?' I for one don't see the relevance of this question to the film's greater narrative arc. Still the film, though largely unsuccessful, leaves one wanting to see Lively's next attempt. Maybe he bit off more than ge could chew this time, but a strong ambition portends good things for the filmmaker's future.