‘Women Wearing Shoulder Pads’ evaluation: An ideal, sudden present

In the annals of issues I couldn’t have seen coming, none has been extra sudden than “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads,” a queer Spanish-language stop-motion comedy melodrama, set within the aesthetic world of a Nineteen Eighties Pedro Almodóvar movie. (It arrives Sunday at midnight on Adult Swim, the house of issues one doesn’t see coming, and premieres the following day on HBO Max.)

Though it takes place in Ecuador, its central character, Marioneta Negocios (Pepa Pallarés), is Spanish, and it’s simple sufficient to think about Almodóvar muse Carmen Maura within the function — although it is usually unimaginable to think about the story instructed as properly, or in any respect, in some other method. When I name this collection excellent, however the comfortable imperfections of its puppets and units, it’s not as a result of the whole lot works as its meant to, however as a result of there’s nothing you may measure it towards — it occupies its personal self-created house. Every component is important. Even presenting it in English could be to lose romantic, dramatic, telenovelistic power.

At the middle of the story is the cuy, a guinea pig eaten in Andean South America, although on this telling they’re additionally utilized in a model of bullfighting. (Some cuys are giant sufficient to journey on.) The major motion is an influence wrestle between Marioneta, a socialite working a marketing campaign selling cuy as pets, not meals, and Doña Quispe (Laura Torres), who has risen from life as a humble butcher to the anything-but-humble CEO of the nation’s most well-known restaurant, El Cuchillo (the knife).

Mixed up of their lives are Coquita Buenasuerte (Gabriela Cartol), Marioneta’s seemingly happy-go-lucky assistant; Espada Muleta (Kerygma Flores), a matadora in love with Marioneta; Nina (Nicole Vazquez), Doña Quispe’s vegetarian daughter, serving a pro-cuy group as its Minister of Refreshments and Head of Recruitment for Rebellious Teens — “I have looked upon the caged cuy through the prison of capitalist enterprise, through the hubristic iron bars of a homocentric world view” — who will turn into a pawn within the older girls’s sport.

Not the whole lot will probably be because it appears.

Created by Gonzalo Cordova (a veteran of “Tuca & Bertie” and “Adam Ruins Everything”) and produced by the Mexican animation studio Cinema Fantasma, the collection comes packaged as eight 11-minute episodes — that’s cartoon size — which neatly represent a brief function movie. On the invoice are thriller, suspense, terror, revenge, scorching romance (together with some puppet intercourse), masked stalkers, efficiency artwork, love notes posted with knives, parodies of tv exhibits and commercials, previous secrets and techniques coming to mild and nuns singing karaoke.

From “Gumby” to “Rudolph” to “Wallace and Gromit” to “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” cease movement is of all types of animation most magical and in its real-space, three-dimensional, handcrafted method essentially the most like life, if not essentially essentially the most lifelike. (It can look ungainly, which can also be a part of its allure.) It’s a magnification of childhood playtime, a puppet present wherein the puppets have damaged free from the puppeteers. The cleverness of the execution is as or extra necessary than how seamless it’s. “Women Wearing Shoulder Pads” does all types of neat tips, some you discover and extra you merely settle for — and when deemed mandatory, or simply amusing, it is going to insert a live-action hand or mouth. It’s an exaggerated world — appropriately to the heavy-breathing materials — however emotionally expressive, even transferring, and many enjoyable.