Koko's Paradise

Max Fleischer's Koko's Paradise plunges the viewer into a surrealist reverie, beginning with the mundane act of its creator, Max, engaging in target practice within his animated studio. This seemingly innocuous setup quickly dissolves into the fantastical as KoKo the Clown and his canine companion, Fitz, inexplicably transcend their earthly bounds, finding themselves in a whimsical, ethereal heaven. Here, they are initiated into the peculiar rites of angelhood, a sequence teeming with Fleischer's signature rubber-hose animation and a nascent sense of the absurd. Yet, this celestial sojourn is abruptly curtailed, as the duo is unceremoniously returned to a more perilous reality: Max's studio, now transformed into a treacherous, live-action duck-shooting gallery, where they must navigate a barrage of real bullets, blurring the lines between animation, live-action, and existential peril.