Mary and Max (3 Stars)

This is a stop-motion animated film made in 2009.

An eight-year-old girl called Mary Daisy Dinkle lives in Mount Waverley, Australia. She doesn't have any friends because of a birthmark on her forehead. Children can be so cruel. Her home life isn't pleasant because her mother is an alcoholic. She drinks cooking sherry. That's awful stuff. There are only two sherries that I drink: Harvey's Bristol Cream and Emva Cream. Harvey's is slightly better, but I like Emva Cream because I drank it when I was young. It brings back memories. I used to drink Emva Cream with my mother while we were watching horror films. I was only 11 when I first drank it, so I drank it in small measures. It became more as I grew older.

Emva Cream is still sold today, but very few shops stock it. The most commonly sold sherry in England is QC Cream, a sickly sherry that's almost as bad as cooking sherry. It's only popular because it's cheap. It's the sort of drink that people buy to get drunk, not to enjoy it. Honestly, I can't recommend it to anybody. Emva Cream, when available, is only slightly more expensive.

But I'm getting off the subject, as I often do. Mary is puzzled by many things, such as where babies come from. Her mother tells her that they're found in the bottom of beer glasses. Mary is interested in America, and she knows that Americans drink a lot of Coca Cola, so she wonders if Americans find babies in the bottom of Coca Cola cans.

One day Mary is reading an American telephone book, and she's fascinated by the weird names in America. She rips out a page, and she writes a letter to Max Jerry Horowitz to ask him where babies come from. Max is a 44-year-old Jewish atheist who lives in New York. He suffers from various illnesses, primarily Asperger's Syndrome.

Getting off the subject again, many people like Whoopi Goldberg don't understand how a person can be Jewish and an atheist at the same time. Whoopi is misguided in believing that Jewish is a religion, not a race. In school one of my friends was a Jewish Catholic. The Jews are the descendants of Abraham via Isaak and Jacob. As far as the Jews are concerned, there are only two races on Earth: the Jews and the Gojim (everyone else). It's possible for non Jews to adopt the Jewish religion, although it doesn't happen often. Unlike Christianity and Islam, Jews don't have missionaries, because Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people. Those who adopt the Jewish religion call themselves Jews, which complicates matters.

When a Jew marries a non-Jew, the child is considered a Jew if his mother is Jewish. This means that Jewishness can be passed down through several generations from mother to daughter. Any son in the line is considered Jewish, but not his children. I had a Jewish girlfriend when I was 18. If the relationship had lasted more than a few months, I might have had Jewish children.

Now let's finally talk about the film!

The film follows the friendship of the two outsiders over a period of 20 years. They confide their innermost secrets in one another. At times the letters stop. Max spends eight months in a psychiatric hospital, and when Mary's letters remain unanswered she thinks he's no longer interested in her.

Things improve over the years. Max wins the lottery and buys a lifetime supply of chocolate, but he's not greedy; he gives the remainder to an elderly neighbour. Mary has plastic surgery to remove her birthmark, and she marries a handsome young neighbour. After completing university she writes a book about Asperger's Syndrome, based on her best friend Max.

The film see-saws emotionally. There are alternate happy and sad scenes. It's like a normal life. I've had happy and sad times in my life, though they probably didn't swing from one extreme to the other as quickly as in "Mary and Max".

The overall impression is that it's a bittersweet film. Would it have been better with real actors? I can't say for sure, but I think not. The figures made of clay add to the film's pathos.

Success Rate:  - 3.2

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