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Cryptozoo Movie Review

Cryptozoo is a 2021 animated fantasy drama film directed by Dash Shaw. It is one of those trippy animated flicks that are too strange for their own sake.

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Cryptozookeepers try to capture a Baku, a dream-eating hybrid creature of legend, and start wondering if they should display these beasts or keep them hidden and unknown. Meanwhile a pair of lovers mistakenly finds their way into the Cryptozoo, leading to unpredictable consequences. What a great premise this movie had. I talk in the past tense because the execution of the said premise was rather lackluster and one could wish that Pixar or even better Disney tackled this story themselves.

Tackling the age-old story of tolerance of others and respecting all animal species, this story is different for mixing different kinds of tones and approaches. I would actually call it ‘Zootopia’ mixed with ‘Jurassic Park’ mixed with psychedelic animation of the eighties. The world building I loved, but those latter elements I did not care for.

The trippy scenes were not my cup of tea and the movie makes the fatal mistake of putting way too much animation styles and approaches and colors into every single frame, leading to an absolute chaos. While I did appreciate its artistic sensibilities, it still did not appeal to me visually.

Yes, I would even call this animation mediocre. It is tough in its edges, very scrappy in its overall aesthetic and simply overly amateurish in its overall look. It is also too colorful with every single scene having way too many different colors put into it, making it somewhat garish and at times even ugly as a result.

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Cryptozoo also failed to properly develop any of its characters, especially the humans as some of the creatures did have depth. The movie’s ecological message and themes worked and some of the dialogue was wonderful and thought-provoking. The imagery and particularly some plot points in the first half were terrific, but the movie’s grotesqueness in violence and gore went overboard and it was unnecessary for this particular story to have all of that in my opinion.