I’ve been a fan of Westerns ever since I was a little kid. The Lone Gunman character has always been one of my favorites. Specifically, Clint Eastwood films like Pale Rider, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and High Plains Drifter are all very good; Unforgiven is my favorite.  Animated Westerns are far and in between. The Academy Award-winning film Rango starring Johnny Depp is the only one that comes to mind. That is not until now. Slide from legendary artist and animator Bill Plympton is the newest animated Western, which is pretty funny and set in a small logging town in the northwest.

There is a little bit of shady business going on in the town of Sourdough Creek by a pair of shady twin brothers who run this small town that the film is set in. When a Lone stranger rides into town on a couple of beavers, he starts to enamor himself with the locals because of his musical talent in playing a slide guitar. He, the daughter of one of the twins Delilah, (Maureen McElheron), and Rosalita (Ana Sophia Colon) who is the voice of the townspeople who are going to get displaced, cause these men some trouble.

Bill Plympton is a well-renowned animator who has been working in this medium for quite a while now. He used to do cartoons in newspapers and magazines before doing animated films. He’s won awards in the past and deserves to be nominated for Slide. He has a unique sense of humor that he has added to this story, but it shows the time and place he was familiar with. It reminded him of where he came from. It was so beautifully rented.

This animation style is all from drawings from Plympton himself. It’s uniquely done but in a fun way. He added some Easter eggs from popular movies like Star Wars and little things involving the billions. The various voices he got during the villain rundown were handled pretty funnily. He just had so many little things besides the Western genre that he added to the film. I was laughing off and on while watching it. It was a genuinely fun film to watch from beginning to end. I loved it so much.

With the animation genre, Disney, illumination,  and a few other studios have taken over using computer animation instead of hand-drawn animation like in years past. Little studios like Cartoon Saloon, Laika, and Studio Ghibli have done very well for themselves as well. Plympton has carved out a place for himself in the animation genre. The animation genre needs visionaries like him to make films that are different and don’t follow a specific mold. Slide is one of those movies. It is nothing like any animated film I’ve seen, even though it has a Western spin on it like Rango. It is all the little things that make it so different.

Animated films lately have been littered with big-name celebrity voice-over actors like Jack Black and Chris Pratt. Slide doesn’t have those, but the voice cast is very good. Plympton himself voices many characters. The cast embodies a lot of the type of characters that usually exist in a Western such as this. The villains, women, and Slide himself (Daniel Kaufman) are all voiced impeccably by this voice cast. They were one of the reasons I enjoyed the movie so much.

Another reason this movie was so good was because of the music. The music throughout the film was very good. The original songs had me moving and grooving during my screening of the movie. The specific genre of music isn’t one I’m that familiar with, but adding in the instrumental things like the slide guitar reminded me of blues music quite a bit. I am a bit of a fan of this genre of music. I just don’t see it in movies that often. A few biopics in recent years have reminded me that this type of music is still alive and well in this era.

Slide reminded me so much why I love Westerns and original animation so much. It has a fun story that had the vibe of a lone gunman-type film with Clint Eastwood starring in it. Plympton threw in a lot of funny moments for good measure. He had me laughing at many of the little Easter eggs and inspired moments. This movie was a pleasant surprise.  It’s not a cookie-cutter animated film like fans of this genre have been getting a lot of lately. It comes from the mind of Plympton and his team of amazing voice actors. I hope this gets serious consideration come awards season. It’s that good.

4 ½ stars

Dan Skip Allen