Decorado

Arnold is a depressed, unemployed, middle-aged mouse who tells his wife Maria that he thinks they are being controlled in an artificial environment, a theory he begins to investigate when his best friend Ramiro takes him and their friend Mr. Chicken Crazy into the off limits forest bordering their town and is taken by a giant owl in "Decorado."

Laura's Review: C+

Spanish director Alberto Vázquez ("Birdboy") returns to his unique style of animation, where creatures from a child's nightmare navigate nightmares of their own, but do not mistake this for a children's animation. "Decorado," which is the Spanish word for scenery or a set, is what Arnold describes to his doctor about his suspicions of what he's living in. After a diagnosis of 'derealization,' Arnold's doctor tells him he needs to calm down, not go into the forest like Ramiro did and that life's worries can make things seem unreal. Then he prescribes pills from ALMA, the Almighty Limitless Megacorporation Agency which appears to rule Arnold's world. And Mr. Gregory, the rat which owns it, is trying to woo Arnold's wife.

Back home, an eviction notice awaits and Maria is exhausted from carrying the workload in a job she begins to suspect is Gregory's charity. At Ramiro's graveside service, Mr. Chicken Crazy is falsely arrested for arson by wolf cops and when Arnold goes to visit him in prison, the chicken tells him he must continue Ramiro's quest to find a way out via the forest and he should start by searching Ramiro's house. When Arnold arrives, the run down shack is being touted by a realtor to a couple of pigs as an upwardly mobile neighborhood, but once he gets in he finds a map Ramiro created with pathways through the woods. Arnold discovers a rat encampment that at first seems friendly, but they are under the influence of drugs supplied by ALMA and are true to their names. A mushroom (wink, wink) tells Arnold that the demon's harp can be used to bring back the dead, and so Ramiro's ghost is summoned to aid the quest and comfort the friend who has been missing him.

Back home with Arnold and Maria, Vázquez segues to a sepia toned flashback as the mice reflect on their idealized youth, where their anti-ALMA graffiti brought the wrong kind of attention, but while a Depression Fairy has been dogging them both, Maria, who had left Arnold for Mr. Gregory, realizes that love is what really matters in life and she still loves Arnold. The two mice set off to find a better life navigating the forbidden forest, but after apparently finding it, come to a stark realization.

Vázquez paints a world that is at once familiar in its fascist oppression and poverty, and not, with its mermaids with fish heads and human bottoms, the better for those harp-playing demons to have sex with. But for all the indications that ALMA is controlling its citizens, the filmmaker has so overstuffed his plot (I haven't even mentioned former TV star Duck Roni or all the neighbors Arnold thinks are watching him) that he loses it. Have we watched this depressing 'toon for 95 minutes to come away with a message that life sucks so make the best of it?

There is no shortage of imagination here, the animation bursting with colorful characters, exaggerated grotesqueries, a phantasmorgia delivered in a palette ranging from bleached out sepia to noxious greens, oranges and purples. But Vázquez only seems to give us half the story while spinning far too many, his most trenchant observation delivered by a cat outside of Arnold's house - 'It's no sign of health to be well adjusted to a sick society.'

Robin's Review: C+

Arnold is a middle-aged mouse with a problem. He has an increasing unease that something strange is happening around him and it is affecting his job, his home life and, especially, his marriage. He must take control of his life and find a way out in "Decorado."

Animation director Alberto Vasquez creates a dystopian tale that takes its premise from the Bard, to paraphrase, "all the world's a stage, and all the mice are merely players." This is how Arnold sees the world. It is not real but something like a movie set and he wants out.

This is where Vasquez takes us on a journey into Arnold's life. His marriage to Marie is troubled and the all-powerful corporation, A.L.M.A., has its tendrils in all aspects of Arnold's life. With his friends, he tries to find a way out but a giant owl thwarts them and he tragically loses his friend, Ramiro.

This terrible loss brings Arnold to find his friend's secret map that shows the way out of Anywhere. Vasquez, with co-scribe Francesc Xavier Manuel Ruiz, pack an awful lot into a scant 95 minutes and, at times, it gets confused with its messages about capitalism, isolation, relationships, escaping one's humdrum existence and more. Some judicial rewriting could have made for a better movie. There are a whole lot of messages, though.

GKIDS releases "Decorado" in theaters on 5/15/26.