Some post-apocalyptic world: The entire planet is ruled by mechanic
beasts that hauntingly look like animal cadavers and that only seem
concerned with keeping the planet running. Man isn't quite extinct, the last
freeborn man (Stéphane Bilodeau) in fact serves his mechanical masters as
a slave, mostly repairing those machines that have stopped functioning.
And yet, the mechanical beasts are also afraid of the last man, because
inside himself, he is supposed to carry the embryo, the means to
rid the world of its mechanical masters. Could the embryo eventually
evolve into Eve (Julie-Anne Côté) to the last man's Adam? Mécanix
is one fascinating film: Made up mostly from old-fashioned stop motion
animation, it puts genuine vision into its special effects, creating a
haunting world from animal cadavers, garbage and the like that is
pleasently old-fashioned also in looks (without ever seeming dated) and
retro in ideas (without becoming a piece of nostalgia). But Mécanix
proves that a fascinating film isn't necessarily also a good film, in fact
it totally fails to grab the audience on a narrative level, telling a very
clichéd, unsubtle and superficial story in a very inaccessible way that
seems a bit pretentious on one hand, but is also terribly repetitive on
the other, and in the end, the whole thing even becomes a tad boring as a
result of that, and seems overlong at a mere 70 minutes. Still, not a
total failure, there's plenty to look at here - but the virtues of the
film stop there, too.
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