If you didn’t read or know anything thing about “The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello”, the very first frames will immediately make you think: “This is Tim Burton’s work”.
But soon enough you’ll realise that that first impression was wrong. Although you’ll easily find similarities between this film n’ Tim Burton’s, this one will take you in another direction into the world of animation.
I’d say n’ to put an end to the comparisons, that this film “lacks” the attention to detail displayed on Burton’s characters.
The entire action runs under a Sepia tone n’ the narrative is made in the first person by the main character, Jasper Morelo in some sort of melancholic, monotone, emotionless voice, which make perfect sense with the slow-paced action taking place. Everything in the film move according to a very specific n’ unique tempo but you’ll find it very difficult to grasp all the details n’ activities that are going on. That happens due the perfect combination of two worlds; the main characters n’ actions move in this almost archaic 2D world, that’s how it visually looks, will remind you of “South Park”; n’ the beautiful n’ visually attractive 3D world in the background. The background is always very active, there’s always something happening n’ the action tempo there matches both the narrative tone.
So, we have these two opposite worlds working together in perfect harmony. The perfection meaning that all the visual appealing of the background won’t distract you from what’s really important, the action, the characters, n’ the story. The apparent lack of details in the characters doesn’t have any kind of negative impact whatsoever. The characters posses enough details that allow the viewers to make their own psychological characterization of each of them, the facial n’ body languages are perfectly shown n’ so are the emotions they show.
The dialogues are clear n’ just enough, they give the impression that only a certain amount of words were allowed to be used, combined with absence of music n’ good acting leaving no margin for dead time.
The Sepia tone is broken in key/dramatic moments with the introduction of Red n’ Orange colours, representing life n’ death, life struggling to stay in the body, life fading away n’ the suffering of the soul, the torments of the characters facing death. These moments mark important changes in the plot n’ set the perfect timing for the introduction of music n’ sound effects.
Although it’s narrated in the first person, the story doesn’t evolve only around the main character, the spotlight is well distributed n’ basically tells the story of a crew in an adventure.
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