Tamala 2010: A Punk Cat in Space (2002)

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

A Disappointing Continuation

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Astro Boy style animation meets disturbing, incoherent surrealism in this odd project from a Japanese music duo called toL. I'm ready to try animation experiments anytime (most seem to come from Japan these days) so I was very interested in this film once I had heard of it.The danger with artistic experiments is that the creators sometimes confuse self-indulgence with creativity and that seems to be on display here. Or perhaps the need to complete a 90 minute movie caused them to stretch out an hour of material past the breaking point. Regardless, I found between the snooze inducing boredom was a lot of brilliance . The perpetual grayness doesn't help as it (and the disjointed narrative) successfully simulates a disturbing dream.If all was indeed created by only one animator, this person is due a reward. Visually excellent. The music and soundtrack are very good. The basic story, well, lets say it's been done before by Tezuka and other anime creators.Worth a look if you are interested in the outer reaches of animation or a fan of trippy movies.

In the same whimsical frame of mind as the Japanese classic "Funeral Parade of Roses," Tamala 2010 is a surreal journey into the world of cats and product placement. Is that weird enough? My partner wanted to leave the theater the whole time, but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this flick. If you can suspend your "Western" need for plot and coherence, sit back and enjoy the fabulous animation (black and white tip o' the hat to Disney's "Steam Boat Willie"), crazy situations and fantastic soundtrack. Any film which takes place on another planet and includes both Hello Kitty drag queens and a mention of the Loch Ness Monster is OK by me. Even if you hate this film, YOU WILL NEVER FORGET IT!

"Tamala 2010" is a great animated movie with a great soundtrack, period. I could stop there and the review would be complete, but I'll say more. Much more.To begin with, this is an animated film by a group that calls itself "t.o.L", and I'm assuming that they came up with the design, the animation, the characters, and the music. It's a film with a plot that could be sketched on a napkin. But that's besides the point. This film is a great fusion of design, 2D and 3D animation, and music in which the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It's as if the children of the creators of Yellow Submarine approached R. Crumb about making "Fritz the Cat" into a film again, Crumb angrily turns them down, so they go to a group of Japanese animators to make a cat-themed movie, and get the spirit of Philip K. Dick as their creative consultant.The result is an animated masterpiece where one scene flows into another, largely driven by music and exciting artwork and visuals, but hardly ever by plot. If this sounds like Disney's "Fantasia", it's not. Tamala is a "cute female cat" who is going from CatEarth to Orion to find her mother, but is diverted along the way to Planet Q (or Q Planet) and ends up in "Hate City" which is a skid row slum type of place with a war going on between cats and dogs.Both CatEarth and Planet Q are highly original creations. We spend most of the movie on Planet Q. Overshadowing everything is the mysterious, sinister, and somehow comforting "Catty & Co." which is a capitalistic conglomerate that controls 99% of all production. Catty & Co. is everywhere, like Big Brother, but more indifferent. It is this "Feline Galaxy" that t.o.L has created that is the big selling point of the movie for me. Now that I've been introduced to it, I want to see more of it, like I want to see more of Springfield each week on "The Simpsons".The attention to detail is amazing. Every scene in this movie has something to offer. There are no wasted backdrops, everywhere you look there are posters and advertisements for Catty & Co., with a brilliant array of designs. So much work went into this movie, so much care was placed in executing each scene, that I had to see it twice, to see all of the details I missed the first time.And what about the characters? Tamala is a "cute female cat" as the movie calls her, but she's no "Hello Kitty". She's an enigmatic symbol that the animation flows around. The film get quite a lot of emotional mileage out of these simple characters, considering how simply she, Michelangelo (her friend on Planet Q), and the Professor are drawn by the animators.This review wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention the great soundtrack. This movie could be broken up into just the animation that goes with the songs and it would still be great. It's a fusion of electronica, heavy metal and pop, and in the context of this film it's fantastic.This is not a film for young kids, it's pretty much R-rated fare. There are some very violent scenes, and occasional use of the "F-word" by Tamala mostly. Though Tamala makes a few sexually suggestive comments, nothing ever happens, and most of the "sexy" talk is from two gay male cat hustlers who talk about other gay male cats they find attractive, but nothing happens visually, it's all talk. "Hate City" is violent, oppressive, dirty, damaged, it's one perpetual skid row, and I wanted more of it, it was a great, original creation! But it's not for young kids, they wouldn't understand it.I went to www.tamala2010.com but could not get the Japanese language pack to install, so I could not get any information about whether there will be a sequel, and I was able to find little credible information about t.o.L via Google, so I am in the dark about the future of this "project" as their site calls it. All I can hope is that they will create more planets with dysfunctional societies for Tamala and her friends to explore. This film is a true work of art, and a true 10 out of 10.

The movie is centered around the kitty-cat Tamala, who appears to be about 1 years old but has a potty-mouth and a tendency to drop-kick anyone she passes.In her universe, cats and dogs are as humans are in ours and Earth, known as Cat Earth, is to a very large extent owned by the large corporation Catty&Co.(spoiler warning) In the movie, Tamala's attempt to reach her berth place in the Orion system, means she ends up on planet Q, where there is a legend of a god named Tatla who will bring the world to some sort of apocalypse, which will signal the inevitable rebuilding of society in an endless cycle. (end of spoiler)The unraveling of this storyline is the basis for the entire movie and the single reason for its failure. In its style, it is naive and clear, with all cats and dogs being bug-eyed and drawn in a fifties pattern. Intermittently, the film goes into CG-mode and beautifully rendered sequences of a robot-cat (Tatla) and Cat Earth is shown for what it most likely really looks like. If the story had been complete, the incoherent story telling style might have succeeded, but as it is, it only succeeds in rambling on and on about Tatla, Tamala and all the other things we don't care about. People were walking out of the theatre all the time while the movie was showing and I don't blame them (at first I did, but towards the end I was also becoming fed up with the incoherency).I don't mind a story open for interpretation: I loved Lost Highway and still think its a great movie if for no other reason than for the fact that it is SO open for interpretation. But there must be *something* to hang on to, some kind of vested interest from the viewer. In this movie there is none. We are presented with oodles of characters, none of which are particularly interesting or sympathetic and end up not caring what happens to them.There were a few surprise laughs as Tamala drop-kicked some innocent bystander or said the f-word in some unexpected sentence, but other than that I think most people were mollified by the whole experience.Go see "Spirited Away" instead, much better and much more engaging.