Reviewed by Ben Lee

This review contains minor spoilers.
The first and last paragraphs have been slightly re-written.

While we all wait for Alternate Vlarion 4, Aaron has given us Pamela for the film festival, a wonderful movie about a detective, named Peterson, trying to solve a murder. Despite its unoriginal-sounding plot, the movie oozes with plenty of jokes, suspense, and a great ending to cap it all off, which keeps you glued to the screen as you try to work out who this Pamela is. The answer, of course, isn't as obvious as you think. In fact, when you do reach the conclusion of Pamela and if you do not manage to solve the case, you will hit yourself repeatedly for not figuring out the answer to the rather clever mystery.

The comedy fits very well with the movie. Instead of a dark atmosphere throughout the movie, jokes have been added to lighten up the mood and a light-hearted mood makes the viewers relax. Oh, and for the record, the jokes are funny. In fact, I found myself chuckling quite a lot. Now, I'm not that familiar with film noirs, but after watching Pamela, I feel like I should watch some more of this genre. Mr. Haynes here has quite brilliantly successfully mixed two rather separate genres without any problems. You get the best of both genres and this makes a must-see compelling movie. Of course, knowing Aaron, the animations and scenery are stunning, and he continues to produce the goods in this department. The detailed buildings, the dark office, and chilling streets, they all create the correct atmosphere and thus making this movie all the more better.

Earlier today I watched Stranger 4 (good, but not as good as Pamela). I loaded up Pamela, completely unaware that Aaron was inspired by it, and I saw a couple of similarities. The most obvious one is that both movies have Gustave searching for a certain person. But despite these rather subtle things, Pamela is unique. Throughout most of the movie, I was in thinking mode. I tried to look out for subtle clues which Aaron might have hidden, while at the same time, laughing out loud at some of the funny jokes. This movie succeeds in making your brain multi-task, by letting you take in all the facts about the case and making your mouth smile as you react to a joke.

Jon Barton is great as the voice of the detective, and he really does add to the jokes. Good-quality voices are vital in movies with monologues, and there are no complaints here. And closely-related to the voice-acting, Aaron also gives us a lot of insight to Detective Peterson's character. Not many movies give you that, but the director here pulls it off without seemingly much effort. I was encouraging him to crack the mystery. Right until the conclusion of the movie, I was really hoping that he would solve this case. I really willed him to do it. I felt for the character as he got attacked, and I felt for the character when he found yet another body lying there on the ground. He felt like a real person for a while, with a proper personality.

And then we come to the answer of the mystery. It wasn't obvious, but it was rather simple, and it's something a lot of people here can associate with. When he finds out the answer to the case (which I will not reveal, it's just too big to spoil), our main detective here is affected and you see him a couple of familiar-looking scenes (including one from JDR Revolutions). But ending it like that...I dunno, something just felt missing. Maybe it's just me. Just one more thing: Stay tuned after the ending credits. You will get a nice surprise.

To sum it all up, Pamela is definitely one to download and enjoy. Combine good all-round animations and camera angles which capture the film noir mood, add jokes and hilarious frames to add in some good comedy, and get a great voice-actor to bring out the best of the monologues. Result? You get this. A superb funny classic with a simple message hidden inside, and this is one to be treasured for a long long time. This is definitely my pick of the Summer Film Festival 2004, beating off competition from SATANIK and Teh Epic Episode 1. This is a must-see. Absolutely brilliant.

Score: 95/100