beautifully ugly

Rating: 9/10 (15 January 2015)

In the tiny town of Mount Waverley in Australia, Mary Daisy Dinkle (Toni Collette) is a poor 8 years old friendless confused picked-on girl with an alcoholic mother and a cold father. She writes a letter to a complete stranger Max Jerry Horovitz (Philip Seymour Hoffman) in a Manhattan phone book. He's an overweight man who finds interacting with people confusing. He likes to eat chocolate hot dogs despite overeating anonymous. They begin a lifelong correspondent friendship as they struggle through their life.
The dry off-center humor is quite effective. It does get some getting used to and this is not everybody's idea of comedy. The same goes for the beautiful ugliness of the black and white claymation. The story is so poignant and so touching. It gets to be quite heartbreaking and that song Perpetuum Mobile will always remind me of 'Mary and Max'.