BOYS GO TO JUPITER Trailer & Poster: The Slow-Fast Anxiety & Ennui of a Florida December
While there is a prevailing misconception, especially in North America, that animation is for kids, that luckily does not stop creators from making animated films by and for a grown-up audience. Especially in these strange days we live in, animation might be the best mode to convey the growing sense that we might not be in the best timeline, and it can capture so much more in its inventiveness and imagination.
Take Boys Go to Jupiter, the feature debut of Julian Glander. A standout from last year's Tribeca Festival, it seems the right film to come along during that more contemplative month of August.
It's the day after Christmas in suburban Florida and Billy 5000 (Jack Corbett) and his friends pass the seemingly endless days by slacking, shoplifting, and beatboxing. In between lounging on the beach and sneaking into pools, Billy spends his time hustling on the food-on-demand app Grubster, desperate to make $5,000 before New Year's Eve. As he darts around the city delivering to a series of oddball characters, a routine stop at the mysterious Dolphin Groves Juice Company leads to a run-in with his former classmate—and crush—Rozebud (Miya Folick) and a surprise backpack stowaway in Donut, a bizarre creature from another world. But Dr. Dolphin (Janeane Garofalo), the powerful orange juice CEO, will do anything to get Donut back, and Billy is forced to make hard choices about love, friendship, and how far he'll go for financial security in a world ruled by capitalism in this absurdist and musical take on a coming-of-age comedy.
Alongside Corbett and Folick, the voice cast is rounded out by Janeane Garofalo (Reality Bites), Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade), Tavi Gevinson (Gossip Girl), Grace Kuhlenschmidt (The Daily Show), Joe Pera (Joe Pera Talks With You), Julio Torres (Problemista), Sarah Sherman (Saturday Night Live), Tony Award-winner Cole Escola (Oh, Mary!), Eva Victor (Sorry, Baby), River L. Ramirez (Los Espookys), Max Wittert (High Maintenance), J.R. Phillips (Summer Camp Island), Chris Fleming (Hell), and comedy writer Demi Adejuyigbe.
Inspired by Google Street View excursions through the streets of Tampa, Florida, the nostalgia of youth and growing up in the suburbs, and an eagerness to examine the capitalism and techno-feudalism in modern society, Boys Go to Jupiter was self-produced and animated entirely over 90 days on the free open-source 3D modeling program Blender.
That's a heck of a cast, and the animation stands out in its unique style and colour palette. Plus (even though it's set in December), it has something of that summer movie tone that evokes what life feels like in our early-21st-century-life of expectation and more than a little ennui and anxiety. The film releases in early August, and you can check out the trailer, a few stills, and link to the film website below.
