![]() It is beautifully simple and childlike on one level, and erudite and deep on another. "Yellow Submarine," curiously enough, exists on two levels with nothing in between. Along the way, they also sing 11 Beatles songs, which are illustrated with the most fanciful animation, and they indulge in shameless puns. ![]() Then comes a series of adventures as the Beatles engage the Blue Meanies in battle, win, free Pepperland and use melodies to make flowers grow. They also get caught in a time trip, speeding up and slowing down time in correct Einsteinian fashion, growing older and younger while their submarine travels the fourth dimension. This is all perfectly clear when it's written about in the English language (how else could Alice describe Wonderland?), but only an animated cartoon can stretch space and bodies so that you literally see Ringo and George zapping back and forth between dimensions. The Beatles are adrift on the sea of holes, and since all holes have an in and an out, you can go into any hole right side up or upside down and come out sideways to everybody else. The strange creatures and designs that inhabit Pepperland are simply a delight to the eye. The beauty of "Yellow Submarine" is that it casts this objective universe aside and sails in a world of pure fantasy. So there's a recognizable jungle in "The Jungle Book," and Tom and Jerry chase each other through an unmistakable living room. Unfortunately, most animated cartoon makers are content to reproduce the real world. ![]() You can do absolutely anything you want with movement, dimension color, shapes, perspective and anything else that occurs to you. As Disney demonstrated in " Fantasia," and as the underground has abundantly proved for the past decade, there is no form of film with more freedom than animation. ![]() What follows is the most original and inventive feature-length animated cartoon since the days when Walt Disney was still thinking up innovations. ![]()
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