Too much of everything

To me, this movie is perfection.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

This is the sort of Bill Plympton short I love. It's simple, funny and extremely violent--though the violence is very cartoony and is probably fine for kids to watch (except, of course, if your child is very stupid and imitates EVERYTHING--in which case you probably shouldn't let them watch anything).The film begins with two similar looking men standing there rather emotionless. Then, suddenly, one hits the other. The other then responds. And, the entire cartoon is made up of the guys doing horrible--I mean REALLLLY horrible things to each other. What makes this so funny is that while they are torturing each other and mutilating each other, the guy about to get it just stands there and lets the other guy do it. And, like a cartoon, almost immediately after, the guy being maimed is just fine--without even a scratch. Otherwise, what's funny about sadism?! What also makes this work so well is not just how outlandish it quickly becomes but the cute and unexpected ending.This is among Plympton's best and I suggest that unless you have no sense of humor you give it a try. I especially likes the lawnmower and baseball scenes.

Push Comes to Shove is an animated short about two men looking the same doing various bizarre things to their faces. Like one pulling the other's ears forward, tying them in front of his face, getting a big rock in between the tied ears and pulling said ears with rock toward the face making a big fluffy hole on it. Or using grass seed with water on other's face, growing grass on it, and using a lawnmower to mow it down! Or painting red marks on it so it looks like a baseball before hitting it, then another face appears literally from the neck up! Like I said, pretty bizarre and highly recommend! I saw this on Volume 5 of The International Tournee of Animation from 1992. Well worth seeing if you like the offbeat.