‘My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea’ Trailer Is Exactly What It Sounds Like
What with social cliques, homework, and hormones, high school is tough enough already. Add to that a massive natural disaster, and it’s a different sort of catastrophe entirely. My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea is both exactly what it sounds like and much more than that. It’s an animated riff on the likes of San Andreas that adds an eccentric sense of humor to the genre. The newly unveiled trailer offers a sample of the thrills (jumping across shark-infested waters!) and the laughs (the bookcase-amputation joke is aces) to be had in this odd little favorite from last year’s Toronto Film Festival.
Writer-director Dash Shaw keeps the focus on a sophomore who also happens to be named Dash, voiced by Jason Schwartzman. He’s got the normal high school tensions — his crush on school newspaper editor Verti (Maya Rudolph) threatens his bond with his best friend Assaf (Reggie Watts) — until chunks of the building start falling into the earth. With additional voice work from Lena Dunham, John Cameron Mitchell, and Susan Sarandon as a no-nonsense lunch lady, they form a ragtag band and attempt to make their way to safety, battling natural (and decidedly unnatural) threats along the way.
The trailer mostly acts as a showcase for the film’s distinctive style of animation, both crude and not. It‘s a rudimentary style of drawing, but because it’s all executed with so much imagination and each frame is crammed with so much detail, you scarcely notice. The best shots of the ground splitting open and fissures belching fire have a bit of a Bosch-ian vibe to them. Keep an eye out for its theatrical debut on April 14.