History WesternAnimation / MaryAndMax

* YouHaveToHaveJews: Max had a Jewish upbringing, but only wears his cap to keep his head warm.

* {{Asexuality}}: Max, which makes it doubly funny that Mary asks him where babies come from in America.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Max forgives Mary and she comes to visit him for the first time with her newborn baby... only to find that he passed away, albeit peacefully, on the very morning that she arrives.]] And then [[spoiler:Mary looks ''up'' to see that Max has laminated all of her letters and [[TearJerker attached them to the ceiling]] in his home]].

** Perhaps the most extreme one was in an (spoofed) DeletedScene on the DVD, where the ending has Mary [[spoiler:finding Max's body on the couch as in the real ending -- except this time, his pets are tearing it apart, as per her thoughts during Max's breakdown]].

* ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: [[spoiler:Mary tries to commit suicide by swallowing pills and hanging herself at the same time. [[LikeYouWouldReallyDoIt On the other hand, that pill bottle was almost certainly decades past expiration since we never see her mother taking them and the bottle is full. Taking a handful might have had just enough potency to get her out of her depression.]]]]

* ChekhovsGunman: Mary's disabled neighbour, who overcomes his agoraphobia just in time to [[spoiler: save her from killing herself]].

-->'''Max:''' I cannot understand how being honest can be considered improper. Maybe this is why I don't have any friends.

* DespairEventHorizon: [[spoiler:Max hates Mary for publishing a book about Asperger's syndrome with him as the subject, primarily because she'd expressed a desire to ''cure'' it when he'd explicitly stated in one of his letters that he saw nothing that needed "fixing".]] Mary becomes incredibly depressed and then [[spoiler:Damien leaves her for his pen-pal friend]]. Later, we see [[spoiler:Mary trying to hang herself]].

[[caption-width-right:325:Sometimes perfect strangers make the best friends...'']]

Mary and Max is a 2009 Australian [[StopMotion clay-animated]] {{Black|Comedy}} [[{{Dramedy}} Comedy-Drama]] written and directed by Adam Elliot, the Oscar winning director of the short film WesternAnimation/HarvieKrumpet.

* ManChild: Max somewhat as he can have a rather childish view of the world (for instance, he passed his time as a garbage collector by pretending to be a robot). Justified somewhat, though, in that not only does he have to deal with having a mental disability but he's had to pretty much take care of himself since he was six years old.

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* ArtisticLicenseLaw: Max's "Mime and the Air Conditioner" manslaughter charge.

Set in the 1970-90s, and ''supposedly'' VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory, ''Mary and Max'' tells the story of a friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary Daisy Dinkle, a lonely 8-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, and Max Jerry Horowitz, an obese 44-year old man with UsefulNotes/AspergerSyndrome living in New York City. The movie follows the story of their life and friendship over the course of Mary's childhood and adulthood. What appears to start out as a solely [[BlackComedy blackly humourous story]] soon turns into something quite dark and [[TearJerker often very depressing]], dealing with everything from [[AbusiveParents parental neglect]], to insecurity, to bullying, to suicide.

* DeliberatelyMonochrome [=/=] SplashOfColor: Scenes that follow Max in New York City are black and white with the occasional splash of color. Scenes that follow Mary in Australia are sepia-tone with the occasional splash of color. Interestingly, once Mary comes to visit Max, she's still sepia-toned when everything around her is black and white, and their exchanged gifts retain their origin's coloration.

* AbusiveParents: Mary's are mostly neglectful and preoccupied, though her mother also calls her fat and ugly, telling her that she's "growing up to be a heifer". In a subversion, outside of those things, they do seem to love her.

* ParentalNeglect: Mary's parents are guilty of this, with her father spending his homelife by stuffing dead birds and her mother by "tasting tea" (a.k.a. drinking sherry).

* BiTheWay: [[spoiler:Probably the best way to describe Damien. He was married to Mary, and later left her for another man.]]

* GoOutWithASmile: [[spoiler:Despite having earlier displayed TheUnsmile, Mary finds Max's corpse looking at the ceiling with a genuine smile on his face.]]

* ReadyForLovemaking: Mary does this at after marrying Damien. [[spoiler:His ambivalent reaction is the first clue that he's not exactly straight.]]

* StealthPun: As young Mary watches the Noblets (see GettingCrapPastTheRadar above), she curls up with Ethel, a rooster. [[DontExplainTheJoke Or cock.]]

* CrapsackWorld: Arguably. The world in which the characters live is far more grounded in reality than most PG-rated claymation works.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: The in-universe cartoon "The ''Nob''lets" are a clear example of this; they're anthropomorphized penises.

* HollywoodAtheist: Averted. Max doesn't believe in God because he's "read many books that prove God is a figment of [his] imagination". Despite this, he doesn't really make much of a big deal about it.

* InformedJudaism: Averted. Although Max doesn't act particularly Jewish as an adult (except for wearing a yarmulke) it's clear he was a member of a fairly strict Orthodox sect as a kid.