5 out of 5

Director: Adam Elliot

While it steps precariously close to melodrama at select moments, Mary and Max maintains a level head, never going too far into movie land with too-cutesy predicaments or played-up-with-strings heart-wrenchiness. Instead we get a believable tale with believable voices and stories, with just enough movie magic to make it wonderful. Mary is a child who lives in Australia. Max is an older man living in New York. Through happenstance, these two become penpals, and the movie patiently fills in, in a roundabout fashion, details about each’s life as the years go on. Several things make this work very well. The voice acting is fantastic. I went into this not knowing who was providing the voices, and upon watching the end credits I was thoroughly surprised, so into the characters that I never would’ve placed the actors. The music is an excellent counterbalance as well, and was also one of those elements I kept worrying was going to steep into too much precious Jon Brion-ness. Instead, it juxtaposes some of the sillier animation elements (which never avoid going for the silly gag or two, adding to the roundedness of the movie) and keeps chugging through the dark elements. That honest representation of the full scope of the story is what really makes this sing – it just plays from start to finish, logically and truthfully, serving the story and film as purely as possible. Notice I haven’t mentioned the animation yet? It’s key here, smoothing out some aspects that might’ve been difficult to handle with actors. Surprising, emotional, funny. Good stuff.