We Are the Strange (2007)

Really Surprised!

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Someone here said not to watch this movie for the plot, but to watch it for the visuals. Follow that advice! This movie is is an amazing, beautiful, stunning, _painting with audio_. This is an amazing piece of art, but this is far from a "movie". This is a series of beautiful paintings set to great video game style audio and sound effects. This movie belongs in a gallery, not a theater.I'm not a huge art fan so I didn't really enjoy this movie past the first 10 minutes. Actually, I gave up after 35 minutes and just turned off the laptop. The movie lacks a plot (at least one I could detect), and between the visuals I was left wondering "is this what people see when they're on acid?". It an amazing piece of art, but not something I would call entertainment.

Being a fan of unusual movies, I decided to go and watch We Are the Strange when it was shown at Leeds Film Festival. Unfortunately, this movie is not strange in a good or interesting way. The plot is pretty much non-existent and if it wasn't for the lengthly character description at the beginning of the movie, it would be nothing more than complete confusion in cinematic form. Although the random mismatch of animation styles used in this movie creates a sense of chaos which is fitting to the world in which the film is based, this does not make for good watching and becomes repetitive very quickly. Some people praise the mixture of animation styles and lack of a plot as 'thinking out of the box'. However, thinking out of the box is not always a good thing. For instance, if I decided to cook myself something new by combining elements of different world cuisines, the result might be: a fish, beef and pasta pie seasoned with typical Indian spices and topped off with a rich chocolate and Weetabix sauce. This would be thinking out of the box, but would anyone want to eat it?All this movie achieves, is to portray its creator's (M dot Strange) self-indulgence. M dot Strange would have saved a lot of time, both for himself and others, if he had simply made the visuals for a five minute music video. There is an obvious reason why most people don't make whole movies by themselves - the results will be unwatchable!

as you can no doubt tell by looking at the rating and comments on "we are the strange", the film has a distinctly polarizing effect about it. it is very easy to level negative criticism at a film of this nature. i will not necessarily disagree with some of their comments. to the casual viewer, the film may seem a disjointed mess without a single cohesive idea. in fact, most people will probably not like this film, though this film was not created to be liked. it is what it is. to some, it will seem inflated with its own sense of self-importance. and the very notion of adapting cg and stop-motion animation into one medium is hardly as revolutionary as the hype surrounding it. these are all fair criticisms.though, to look at a film such as "we are the strange" in terms like this is a disservice. it is not so much a movie as much as it is an abstract painting or a collage and should be watched thusly. in fact, the inclusion of typical movie structuring is almost to the detriment of the work - though, the plot is simple, to the point of it being unnecessary. we are to sit back and engage the film just as the film is attempting to engage us. it is ANTI, yet, it is so human. we can find themes of pathos, desire, and fear if we choose. the room for interpretation is endless."we are the strange" is a vibrant piece of art, but it's not for everyone. undeniably, however, it is something to behold and a grand statement from a writer/director who has yet to realize his full potential.

Luckily i saw this film at a film festival from a pass i bought to watch as many films as i wanted. So at least when i left this film feeling angry and annoyed at how terrible it was, i could at least gain some satisfaction by knowing i hadn't wasted my money completely.This film lacks everything that makes a good film, it has no structure, no plot, no characterisation, no nothing. The only good point i could give this film is the fact that it was done by one man, that is an achievement i'll admit, but still not worthy enough to make this film any better. For it felt that M dot Strange had just tried to make as many cool animation scenes as he could, and thought i'll whack this in because it looks cool, when it was just painful. There was no story and the only bit of a story you got you knew what was going to happen, and by this point you don't care. For i couldn't care less whether any characters died in this film, because we never truly got to know them or really know what was going on, what were the rules to this world, why did this happen or anything else. M dot Strange spent too much time on his animation and completely forgot everything that is needed to make a good film.Basically i say to anyone who wants to watch this film...don't! Never have i seen so many people walk out a film than i did with this one. The only reason i stayed until the end was because it was cold outside, and i'm fair in seeing a film to the end until i make my judgement. And here it is.