There’s no smoking in this Cincinnati cab, but there isn’t a “No smoking” sign, just one saying, “I have asthma.” In the hotel elevator, Michael (voiced by David Thewlis of “The Theory of Everything”) tells the bellhop his flight from L.A. wasn’t bumpy; on the phone with his wife he says it was. Out his hotel room window, Michael spots a man in a building across the street masturbating, but when the guy sees him watching, it’s Michael who recoils in embarrassment.
What an unbelievable eye for observing human behavior in the acclaimed head of Charlie Kaufman (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation”). “Anomalisa,” a title that won’t seem unusual at all when you see the movie, is the writer’s first feature since 2008’s “Synecdoche, New York,” and he has the kind of style that I wonder how we made it this long without him. His new movie, co-directed with Duke Johnson, is animated and absolutely not for kids. Not because it’s graphic, although there is an animated sex scene that does not resemble “Team America: World Police” in the slightest. It’s because “Anomalisa” is a dizzyingly intelligent and mature existential comedy that deals in familiar subject matter (loneliness, lack of connection, a wandering eye) but turns those seemingly unavoidable on-screen discussion points into something enlightening and vital.
Michael’s just in town for one night before he delivers a speech about customer service (his popular book is called “How May I Help You Help Them?”) that he rehearses in his room before he puts it down and rehearses a phone call to an old flame. For a moment, it seems he’s chasing answers from his past, “High Fidelity”-style, but it’s clear he’ll drift to any woman he can put on a pedestal, something different from what he has now. Again, not new material necessarily—and a few lines are too direct about identity and dissolving bonds between people—but it’s brilliant to give everyone but Michael and Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh), a woman in town for the conference, the same voice and practically the same face.
Meanwhile, Kaufman and Johnson show people as they actually are, through the lens of absurdist humor like Michael yelling at vacillating shower temperatures and being puzzled by a hotel phone with numerous buttons (burger, plate, chicken, etc.) that seem to represent room service. At various points, Michael and Lisa, who shows how heartbreaking “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” can be when sung a cappella, fear their time together will be short-lived; fittingly, the 80-something-minute “Anomalisa” is beautiful and brief, sending you into the world to see things differently.
Selected quote: “It’s boring. Everything’s boring.” —Michael
See it now. 3.5 stars (out of four)
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