I have a personal bias against Corporate Memphis, commonly known as Alegria art, at least when it comes to its overuse in advertising. The art style — known for its crisp colors, characters, and geometric shapes — often comes across as impersonal, insincere, and subtly pandering. Debut writer-director Julian Glander’s Boys Go to Jupiter is the first time I’ve seen any derivation of this style put to good use. It’s a hilarious and original romp through some of our most intrusive collective thoughts about the modern world.
Jupiter is a gentle takedown of the corporate capture of nearly every aspect of our daily lives, done in a tubular, three-dimensional variation on Alegria. The writing is the equal of its offbeat technique, encompassing political and cultural satire, a comforting musical angle, and even alien encounters. As 16-year-old Billy 5000 (yes, that’s his name; voiced by Jack Corbett) spends more and more time delivering food with delivery app “Grubster” (with the great catchphrase “Have a Grubby Day!”), his grown-up sister Gail (voiced by Sorry, Baby’s Eva Victor) and his friends become more and more distant. Having been abandoned by his mother, Billy’s desire to make $5,000 and leave his hometown of Jupiter, Florida makes quite a lot of emotional sense. It’s only when he meets Rozebud (voiced by Miya Folick) and her overbearing mother Dr. Dolphin (voiced by Janeane Garofalo) that escape becomes a realistic possibility.
Dr. Dolphin’s fruit juice factory looks fairly innocent from the outside, but it hides some bizarre secrets. One of these secrets ends up in Billy’s delivery bag after his first visit to the factory: an adorable donut-shaped alien who Billy names “Donut.” Donut doesn’t really speak so much as he gurgles, and he loves any kind of tasty treat offered to him. For as short as it is, the film takes a while to get to this central dilemma, but eventually Billy must decide whether to abandon Donut for his own personal gain or prioritize kindness and friendship.
One way the film achieves its coolly down-to-earth tone amidst all of its strange happenings is its deadpan comedy. A large cast of characters inhabit Glander’s vision of Jupiter, and many of them are either nonplussed by some of the oddest things around them or active participants in the oddities themselves. One particularly amusing non-sequitur involves Joe Pera as the voice of a mini-golf course owner whose misfortunes are shared with his course’s anthropomorphic props. There’s a genuine sense of wonder in these kinds of moments, because you’re trained to anticipate that this film can go any which way and regularly make it funny and somewhat poignant.
The Alegria art style, for me, still proves to be at least a minor setback, because there are moments where the film clearly wants to wring much more emotion than laughter from its audience. The problem is that these characters — at least the human ones — are hard to connect with on that level, due to their tiny eyes giving us very little window into their soul. The film itself has soul, there’s no doubt about that. It’s just that it’s never quite able to put that emotional bow on itself that would take it from successful experiment to genuine masterpiece, mostly due to the character designs. Jupiter is still absolutely worth seeing, especially for animation fans looking for what could very well be the next big thing. | George Napper
