Fantastic Planet (1973) 6/10

Fantastic Planet is a Czech animated film made during the height of the Cold War.

The film's production had to be moved to France to escape the Soviet rule of the time and tells a sci-fi tale of a world with giant aliens that have reduced humanity to nothing more then pets for pleasure. I'm guessing they symbolically represent the Communist regime that was steam rolling the world at the time. The humans then band together and work to overthrow the aliens.

The animation in this film is pretty primitive but affective. There's a whole lot of imagination going on here with wonderful strange creatures and customs. The crazy jazzy sound track also helps the film seems from another world, a world where giant blue aliens rule and crazy jazz is the order of the day. I shudder to think of it. Anyway, the film is pretty interesting and honestly if it had never existed I doubt we'd have The Wall or the Heavy Metal films. The only downside to the film is the overly simplistic plot coupled with a very slow pace. At certain points of the film it seems almost tedious. Check it out if you like animated films or want educate yourself a bit on the history of the adult oriented animated film.

Overall - 6/10