last night in a cologne cinema, johannes wolters (indac) provided a preview of the christmas movie klaus. it is more or less hand-drawn by the madrid based team of sergio pablos. the look is amazing, the aesthetics stunning, not a single scene is polished disney-like. but the plot is. you can forget the story, it’s yet another weak-hero–turns-the-bad-world-into-a-good-one-and-matures plot. the postman story could have played anywhere, but for christmas marketing reasons netflix obviously chose a santa klaus setting. it’s such a wonderful film with an extremely cliché like storyboard.

i interviewed pixar’s founder john lasseter many years ago and asked him if he ever considered to put more unexpected drama into his movies, maybe like film noir? i asked. he shook his head: no way. we make family movies, and that’s movies we personally enjoy.