The anime film “Poupelle of Chimney Town”, Yusuke Hirota’s first directorial film, is set in a metropolis where the sky is always dark with smoke. The inhabitants are controlled by disguised officials called inquisitors, who make it their job to suppress dissenters, especially civilians who imagine that there could be a world beyond the nearby ocean or the obliterated firmament.
In this dystopia, animated in a way reminiscent of a steampunk Chutes and Ladders, Lubicchi (voiced by Antonio Raul Corbo), a lonely boy who works as a chimney sweep, makes his first friend: a garbage collector – that is, a creature made out of the trash can – which he calls Poupelle (Tony Hale). (The name is similar to “poubelle,” which is French for trash can.) Poupelle’s origins are obscure, but in a pre-title sequence, he seems to come from the stars, where Lubicchi’s father (Stephen Root), who disappeared, always insisted to his son to look.
Adapted by Akihiro Nishino from his picture book of the same name, the story evokes familiar touchstones: “The Wizard of Oz” (in Poupelle’s Scarecrow-esque headgear and the climax of deploying a hot air balloon); “ET” (boy alien friendship); and “WALL-E” (the landfill aesthetic). The allegory is semi-coherent but intriguing. In fact, this movie wonders what would happen if the existence of a self-devaluing currency led radical libertarians to create Big Brother to protect people from a central bank.
Trying to read the movie – while admiring the palette and strange character details (Lubicchi has a strange vampire overbite) – keeps “Poupelle” fun for a while. But the film ultimately recoils from the most disturbing ideas and harks back to a comforting sentimentality.
Poupelle of Chimney City
Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. In theatres.