The crrepy use of puppets and stop-action in Anomalisa

Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa is a disturbing but for me hugely disappointing film - a 90-minute drama told entirely through the use of felt puppets and stop-action animation. The story such as it is tells of a motivational speaker traveling to Cincinnati for one night to give an address and who's going through a crisis in his life - marriage falling apart, he seeks solace first from an old beloved in Cincinnati and then from a woman he meets in the hotel hallway. What if this movie were made w/ actors and not puppets? We wouldn't watch it - it wouldn't even have been made. There is nothing special, unusual, engaging, or except in extremis even credible in Kaufman's story. But does the stop-action make it worth watching? It of course makes the characters less human and recognizable, as if these events could not take place in our world but only in a world of disassociated voices, strange and awkward physical movements, an alternate world that I found creepy and monstrous right from the start. I guess that's the effect K wanted, but for me - it pushed me away from the movie rather than drew me into it. Technique needs to serve a purpose; in this movie, it just fills a vacuum, but fills it with mud.