Realistic, funny and strangely creative

Rating: 10/10 (8 October 2014)

Mary is a nerdy little girl living in an Australian suburb with her drug addict mom and bizarre factory worker father. She constantly calls herself ugly, especially concerning the large brown birthmark on her head.
One day, while her mother is "buying" envelopes, Mary finds a New York City address book and writes to Max, an obese Jewish man living in a skyscraper apartment. He writes back, reluctantly at first, and Mary's mom assumes the letter is some kind of pedophilia attempt and throws it in the garbage. Mary's beloved pet rooster retrieves it and she eagerly writes back to Max, learning that they both have a lot in common, like their love of chocolate and cartoons.
As the story goes on, it is implied that the film takes place in the 70's, when little was known about mental disorders and electroshock therapy and heavy medication was still frequent. Max has a breakdown and is lifted from his apartment in a catatonic state, featured in the news as "retarded obese man lifted from apartment window". He is put through eight months of harsh psychiatric treatment and Mary assumes he thinks she's ugly and tries to forget her friend. He writes back to her eventually, and she's overjoyed, but as she reaches adulthood her parents die and she goes to university, paying for corrective surgery to impress a boy (he turns out to be gay later on) and she writes and publishes a book on Asperger's Syndrome using Max as a case study. Max is horrified when he reads that she thinks Asperger's Syndrome is a mental disability that can be "cured" someday, and when he sends her the M key from his typewriter she falls into an alcoholic depression, contemplating suicide until her agoraphobic neighbor comes to the rescue with a new package from Max.
She goes to visit Max with her newborn baby, only to find his dead body on the couch. She sits with him and holds his hand, and then is startled and overjoyed to find tons of her drawings and letters taped to Max's ceiling, and she realizes that she was his best and only true friend, just as he was for her.
Max's portrayal of Asperger's is very accurate. I have Asperger's, severe depression and chronic pain syndrome but there is a varied range of types of Asperger's Syndrome on the Asperger's spectrum. Mine is more creating my own imaginary friends although I'm an adult, lacking social skills and only ever wearing one color, as well as an obsession to pollute the planet on purpose. It was wonderful to see Max showing that Asperger's isn't a disease or mental illness, that it doesn't need a "cure".
I loved the animation, and it was great to find something with a more adult theme instead of just Disney films and generic anime stuff. Mary and Max is original, creative and incredibly hilarious at times, as well as revealing about the ideology of the 70's. Nothing is ever sugar-coated, it is blatantly stated that Mary's mom is an alcoholic and a drug addict, and that the electroshock methods used in the 70's are wrong. There are some sex comments, vulgar language is used at times, prostitutes, condoms, babies, etc. are brought up occasionally and I have no idea why but various characters are always farting at random times in the film. It was unnecessary and sort of took away from the film, but otherwise:
Great soundtrack
Excellent voice actors/actresses
Original plot
Lovable and creative characters
Amazing animation
The plot vaguely reminded me of the 1989 film Babycakes, about the obese woman who works at the funeral parlor in New York City. It came out around the same time Coraline and the Lovely Bones did, and to be honest I enjoyed this story the best out of the three, mainly because it's honest.
This is one movie I'll always love, and I highly recommend it. I think it's the best film of 2009, maybe even the best film of the decade, forget all that Hunger Games trash and watch this because it's far more original than anything I've seen in a long time!