S.P.I.C.: “The Storyboard of My Life”

Illustrator Robert Castillo combines episodes from his life with examples of his cartooning in this collection of six short films. Unfortunately, Castillo's stories run along the lines of naughty schoolboy antics, while the one genuinely unusual piece—describing how he came to live with his parents for the first time when he was seven—leaves many nagging questions unanswered (such as why was the American-born Castillo initially sent to live with his grandmother in the Dominican Republic while his parents stayed in New York and had another son during his absence?). Castillo narrates each story—including the title piece about diffusing a racial epithet hurled at the filmmaker in his youth—in a droning, humorless voice and illustrates his tales by filling cartoon panels with exaggerated caricatures of the people being described. “S.P.I.C.” won a Student Academy Award in 2004, and Castillo has since gone on to do storyboards on some minor feature films, but this compilation of his early work is not a necessary purchase. Aud: P. (P. Hall)