Perpetual Motion in the Land of Milk and Honey

The engineering Holy Grail – the idea of perpetual motion. A machine that can power itself and produce more energy that it can use, hence being able to provide free energy to all the masses. It is this quest that Al + Al find their grandfather working on when they go to visit him in his north of England home.

A wonderful title was enough to get me interested in this rather weird film that has the invention of a perpetual motion machine as its starting point. However to suggest that this is all there is to it is to do the imagination and weird animation a disservice. The film offers up an array of unsettling images and sounds throughout and, although it doesn't make any sense whatsoever, is creepy and very effective. The animation style is such a strange mix of live action and computer animation but it doesn't always flow quite like it should – at times showing the limitations of the platform that created it. However what saves it is imagination that the makers had.

The film is just one weird image after another and it all matches the very strange feel the whole thing has throughout. It may not have the narrative to make you care what is happening but it engages you enough so that you do at least want to see more. As such this is a very enjoyable film solely on the basis of throwing the viewer into a strange world of graphics and sounds that mix the imaginative with the unsettling and produces a film that is well worth seeing even if audiences raised on Pixar will think the animation isn't that hot.