Memoir of a Snail (2024) review

Australian loner Grace Prudence Pudel (voiced by Sarah Snook) relays her personal history to a snail she named Sylvia ... and none of it pleasant: she was an outcast at school because of her cleft lip, her and her loyal brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) were separated from each other after both their parents passed away, her first real romantic relationship with microwave repairman Ken (Tony Armstrong) blossomed and fell apart and then she became best friends with worldly (and wrinkled) Pinky (Jacki Weaver).  Although the stop-motion animation is distinctive - as it was with Elliot's 2009 feature Mary and Max - this is annoyingly grim (it looks like the apocalypse has already taken place) and seems to be under the impression that being purposely sad somehow makes it "true to life" ... except the morbid tone has a distancing effect (characters weep every ninety seconds) and not even an attempt at an "uplifting ending" (following an aborted suicide) can "lift it up."  Elliot supposedly worked on it for eight years and I appreciate the devotion, but in that time he should have spent some energy reconfiguring the script: using ultra-religious nutjobs as villains - who are, as expected, homophobic and believe in "conversion therapy" - is a too-easy ploy for audience sympathy.