Mary & Max is a stop motion animated film written and directed by Adam Eliot. The story follows a lonely Australian girl called Mary Daisy Dinkle, (played by Bethany Whitmore and Toni Colleti), who was raised by neglectful parents. One day she finds a New York city telephone book and decided to write to someone. She randomly chooses Max Jerry Horowits' name from the phone book (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) and decides to write to him. Max who has Asperger's is a 44 year old man who claims to be a Jewish Atheist and is morbidly obese. Over the years they keep on writing to each other as they form an unusual friendship. 

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I find that this film is a perfect example that animation as a medium doesn't have to be aimed for children as it does use child like character designs but the humour is aimed for grown-ups, and therefore may not be suitable for children. The majority of these characters have a lot of personal life problems and I feel the black and white cinematography fits in well to this film. The use of stop motion gives it that hand crafted look and adds to the grittiness of the film and also gives a pure personal touch to this movie. 

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This film does have a certain level of slapstick humour that can end up being dark and sarcastic. This humour relates to Mary and Max's personal problems as troubled characters and even the troubled people around them. I believe the sound track to this film is perfect for the tone of this film as they use classic catchy scores from Simon Jeffes and the Penguin Café Orchestra's Perpetuum mobile, as well as Russian Rag by Elena Kats-Chernin. These pieces of music really drew together the overall story.

 

In conclusion, I don't think you can go wrong with this film , so I will give it 5/5 due to the fulfilment of its role as a great animation.

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