DVD Review: Persepolis
A boring flick that tried too hard for too much
As "alternative" animated movies like Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly and French import Renaissance have proven, it is indeed possible for the customarily child-oriented medium to maturely deal with themes directed towards older audiences. Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's Persepolis tries to join these ranks but fails, ultimately becoming a pseudo-intellectual, boring mess.
Adapted from Satrapi's semi-autobiographical graphic novel, Persepolis follows young Marji's teenage years and early adulthood as she comes of age. Its use of a post-revolutionary Iran as a chaotic backdrop to illustrate how tumultuous and chaotic the journey into adulthood is for all young women is tremendously inspired, but the execution is horribly lacking. Persepolis spreads itself too thin, unsuccessfully attempting to mix the kind of broad "quirky" comedy that made Juno so annoying with the human drama it handles so well. There's a good movie somewhere, but the shallow grabs for laughs all but bury it, and it's a damn shame, because Persepolis tends to be quite visually stunning.
The stark black and white animation is striking and, while never quite achieving the harshness of Renaissance, it still creates its own ominously expressionistic style that makes the literal and figurative horrors of the film appropriately harrowing. The frequent surrealistic flights of visual fancy, however, do not work as well. While inventive and unique the first few times, they quickly get old. [ ... ]
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