Anomalisa Is Sad Puppet Theater

As R.E.M. once sang, everybody hurts, and in Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s Anomalisa, an obsessive drama about suffering and isolation featuring stop-motion-animated figures, that goes for puppets too. Michael (voiced by David Thewlis) is a successful motivational speaker on a business trip to Cincinnati. He’s also, it turns out, cracking up, having become so distanced from other humans–and from himself–that he can barely function. His demeanor shifts when he meets a shy young fan, Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh, whose guardedly cheerful presence gives the movie some soul). They connect in a scene that, particularly for puppet sex, is staged with remarkable tenderness, but it’s clear this bliss can’t last.

Kaufman (Synecdoche, New York) and Johnson (TV’s Moral Orel) work hard to make us feel something for this shell of a person, struggling to be whole. But once you start reckoning with Anomalisa’s obsession with self-absorption, the novelty of this one-man pity party wears off. A little puppet pain goes a long way.

–S.Z.