Idiots and Angels (2008) poster
2008 · animation · comedy · fantasy · drama

Idiots and Angels

Directed by Bill Plympton1h 19m2008
ElsewhereIMDb7.03kRT93%
  • sombre
  • surreal
  • cold
  • signature
Movie DNA

Sombre, steady, measured animation / comedy, surreal in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

Angel, a selfish rotter is hanging around in a local bar, groping the wife of the barman and dealing with weapons. One morning he wakes up finding a pair of wings growing at his back. These wings do good deeds against his nature. But suddenly he finds himself fighting those who want these wings for their own dark plans.

Our read · Idiots and Angels (2008) reads as a sombre, steady, surreal animation · comedy · fantasy entry — measured in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, cold in temperature, ambivalent in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of Idiots and Angels

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want surreal wordless adult animation about a selfish man sprouting unwanted angel wings.

ends bittersweetit stays with youa slow buildgrips by minute 12attention 3/5earns its length
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upnudityexplicit sexgraphic violencecringe humiliation

Skip it tonightYou dislike no-dialogue films or grotesque surreal adult animation.

If Idiots and Angels is your film
I Married a Strange Person! (1997)
same director's surreal adult animation transformations
(more chaotic and less narrative)
The Tune (1992)
earlier Bill Plympton animated musical feature
(lighter and song-driven throughout)
Waking Life (2001)
philosophical rotoscoped animation on self and reality
(more live-action rotoscope and conversational)
DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
Nearest by DNA

Eight films that read most like this one.

Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”

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