Second to None

The scouts

A premise so stupid it wraps back around to genius—twin brothers racing toward death to win a title literally no one cares about, and the film knows exactly how absurd that is. This is the kind of high-concept dark comedy that makes you uncomfortable for laughing, which means it's doing something right.

The animation carries a deliberate flatness that echoes a lineage of deadpan comedic form, though the premise's sheer thinness resists the kind of thematic depth one might expect from the tradition it's playing in.

The decision to animate this rather than shoot it live-action is crucial—there's a permission structure in the medium that lets the escalating body horror of aging-as-competition breathe without tipping into grotesque cruelty, and that calibration is what makes the dark comedy actually land.

Reviews

Not only is the animation itself quite unique, especially the quirky old dudes character design, but the story itself is absurd and dark but still so much fun.