Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation

The animation world has evolved a lot since Spike and Mike began their festival over 20 years ago. No doubt, they paved the way and helped launch such mainstream crudities as Beavis and Butt-head, South Park, and MTV's Cartoon Sushi (where some of theses films have already aired). But with all that competition, are Spike and Mike still valid? This year's festival doesn't make a strong case in their favor.

One of the few highlights is the hilarious "How To Use a Tampon," where a young girl attempts creative methods of insertion. Other selections range from mildly amusing (in "Karate Dick Boys," ninjas fight with their "swords") to confusing and gratuitous (in the impossibly long "Animalistic Times," a claymation jerk imagines sex and yells insults like, "Why don't you take a shit?"). The nadir is reached with "Sick & Twisted Special Games," which spends so much time congratulating itself on being un-PC that it forgets to be funny. Without humor, it's just retard-bashing, which isn't even amusing for the Farrelly brothers.

The funniest piece here, a series of vignettes called "Beyond Grandpa," keeps the humor sick and twisted yet accessible and somewhat understated. But Spike and Mike seem to be on the decline: whereas old standbys like the two South Park precursors and "No Neck Joe" are among the best of the fest, most of the rest are just cuss words and animated genitalia. At the Avon Friday-Sunday, May 28-30, at midnight.
-- Dan Tobin