Film Review: Klaus

Originally published December 11, 2019

Forget about a $160-million gangster epic. Netflix’s riskiest play this year is an original hand-drawn animated film. Klaus is Netflix’s first entry into original animation; they’d picked up distribution rights to other animated films in the past, but the streaming giant was involved in Klaus from the start.

The film fits right in at the streaming giant. There hasn’t been a commercially successful hand-drawn in years and the film’s financial prospects would not be helped by its seasonal nature. There aren’t many people who want to watch Christmas movies in the middle of May.

Klaus is helped by its Christmas-y nature. Christmas generally lends itself to visual inventiveness and Klaus is no exception. The film is beautiful. It’s one of many films in recent memory that make the case for a renaissance in hand-drawn animation or at least more experimentation with animation.

The film’s nebulous time period gives director Sergio Pablos and his team the ability to play with the design of the main setting of Smeerensberg, creating this dark, dreary, almost gothic town riddled by centuries of conflict between two clans reminiscent of the Hatfields and McCoys.

The character design are top-notch. Lead characters Jesper (Jason Schwartzman) and Klaus (an understated JK Simmons) are as much visual opposites as they are mental opposites. Jesper is a short, scrawny, pampered playboy given one last shot at redemption and tasked with establishing a post office in the northern town of Smeerensberg. His ultimatum is simple: process 6,000 pieces of mail in a year or be cut off from a very lucrative family fortune.

The catch: Smeerensberg is a town where the two clans have one thing to say to each other and they don’t need letters to do it. So he invents one by getting the town’s children to send letters to Klaus, a gentle giant of a woodworker who has a stash of toys in his house.

Yeah, this film doesn’t exactly hide where it’s going. It doesn’t get there particularly smoothly either. Every character is either grating or a bare sketch. Jesper is especially grating. It’s understandable why his dad threatened to cut this worthless sucker off from the family fortune. He can barely be asked to lift a box. He’s Kuzco with none of the charm and about half of the wit.

His love interest Alva (Rashida Jones giving it her all) isn’t much better. She’s a rather thin schoolteacher who works as a fishmonger because the town’s children don’t read or write. She’s probably the best designed and animated character in the film, but that doesn’t save her from being a nothingburger of a character.

The film’s script does these characters no favors. It’s a rather cynical script for a Christmas movie. Most attempts at humor are based at insults and jabs between characters with very little that sticks the landing. There is a particularly inventive sequence explaining the rivalry between the town’s two clans but that’s about it. I’ll put it this way: the most memorable character is a character the audience can’t understand. The film’s most effective humor is physical, whether it’s the daily brawls under the town’s Battle Bell or slapstick at the hapless Jesper’s expense.

The visual humor allows the film to lean on the strengths of its visuals. But the film can only lean on them so far. Klaus is pretty to look at and that might be enough to turn it into an annual tradition in some households. Just don’t look too close. You might see the story strain to fit 90 minutes.

Final score: 6.5/10