A frantic court jester vainly pulls out all his performing stops in a desperate but futile attempt to please the malevolent Queen Vedma. At last out of ideas, he commits hari kari as the evil crone urges him on with her sadistic cackles. The jester’s death has a plus, however, as the beauty of light and color flows from his dying body and spreads to the queen’s horror throughout her kingdom. In a grim world of death and decay, this ultimately proves as fatal to the queen as water did for the Wicked Witch of the West. Allison Schulnik’s “Vedma” isn’t particularly original, but somehow that doesn’t seem to matter here. The stop motion animation is excellent, first of all. Second, Schulnik’s queen is so malignant and her jester so desperate for approval that you can’t help getting drawn into this universal tale with its roots dating back to the Brothers Grimm, if not before.
