CARTOON STRAINS ITS WEIRDNESS FACTOR.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

A NEW ANIMATED feature by eccentric do-it-yourselfer Bill Plympton is always welcome, if only because his jittery, strongly graphic style and freakazoid surrealism is a refreshing alternative to the slick, big-studio cartoon formulas.

But Plympton's latest, ``Mutant Aliens,'' succeeds almost entirely as an anti-Disney shockfest. While grotesque violence and vigorous, bizarre sexuality appeared in Plympton's previous features, ``The Tune'' and ``I Married a Strange Person,'' those films put clever psychological and cultural concerns first. This one is almost exclusively adolescent guy material - sci-fi, revenge and erotic fantasies - with a few, hardly original swipes at government bureaucracy, commercial greed and animal exploitation thrown in for ballast.

The unnecessarily convoluted plot involves an astronaut, Earl Jensen, whose space mission is secretly sabotaged by NASA head Dr. Frubar. Jensen's little girl, Josie, is the only person who knows that the evil scientist - whose long-term plan is to turn our upper atmosphere into one giant electronic billboard - is responsible for her daddy getting lost in space. To express her disapproval, she bites off one of Frubar's fingers.

Some 20 years later, Josie is a voluptuous astronomer with a very eager boyfriend, Darby. The latter's lust is often frustrated by heavenly distractions, never more so than when Jensen's old capsule falls to Earth. The astronaut emerges with a story about a planet full of giant noses, but that's a ruse. He's actually brought back a half-dozen of the title creatures, the offspring of animals cruelly experimented with and shot into orbit. The mutant aliens then proceed to eat most of the government. But even with Josie and Darby's help, Jensen's revenge on the resourceful Frubar proves difficult.

Plympton, who hand-draws most of his cels and relies on a small staff to animate them, has a good time with the monster designs, the ultra-gory action scenes and the alternately titillating and stomach-turning love matches between men, women, beasts and detached, sentient body parts. However a repetitiveness, something previously unseen in the filmmaker's imaginative body of work, soon takes hold, as the same goofy/queasy ideas just keep repeating in more frantic fashion.

``Mutant Aliens'' certainly is outrageous fun if you can stay in the spirit of it. But outrageousness is all Plympton seemed to be going for this time. We miss the quirky amazement that used to come along for an integral part of the ride.

MUTANT ALIENS - Three stars

(Not rated: violence, sex, nudity, language)

Director: Bill Plympton.

Running time: 1 hr. 23 min.

Playing: Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Fairfax 3, L.A.

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Animator Bill Plympton brings his distinctive talents to ``Mutant Aliens'' but ultimately gives audiences too much to chew on.