The story focuses on Mary Daisy Dinkle (voiced by newcomer Bethany Whitmore a child, and Toni Collette when she's older), a chubby, bespecatcled little girl living in Australia, whose only friends are her pet rooster, Ethyl, her handmade replications of the characters from her favorite cartoon show, and the legless, agorophobic man across the street who pays her to collect his mail. Mary, with a brown birthmark marring her forehead and eyes the color of a muddy puddle, is bullied in school and ignored and neglected by her father, who works in a factory attaching strings to tea bags and stuffs dead animals he finds on the roadside as a hobby, and her mother Vera, whose hobbies include listening to cricket on the radio, shoplifting, and drinking sherry until she passes out.

Mary has a lonely, unhappy life, until one day she randomly pulls an address out of a New York City phonebook at the post office and decides to send a letter to the name she selects, Max Jerry Horowitz (Philip Seymour Hoffman), an equally lonely, overweight, socially inept, Asperger's-afflicted lapsed Jew who lives a largely solitary existence in his dingy apartment with his pets: an endless succession of goldfish who die tragic deaths, his parakeet, Mr. Biscuit, and his one-eyed cat, Hal ("short for halitosis, which he has"). Max suffers from crippling anxiety and a tendency to lapse into a state of near-hysteria whenever his trauma button is tripped -- which is often.

But when he receives Mary's letter, he decides to write the girl back, forging a connection across miles that makes no distinction around age, gender, or other such social considerations. To Mary and Max, they are each the other's friend, the only friend either of them has ever had, and they cling to their penpal friendship as a lifeline that sustains them both through their trials and travails.

Beneath the surface of this story, though, there's an underlying message about the need for human beings to connect with each other; through this most unlikely friendship spanning 20 years, Max and Mary find a camaraderie within their mutual loneliness and isolation. Neither Mary nor Max has ever known the stability of a stable and loving family. Max's father abandoned him and his other to a kibbutz, and shortly thereafter his mother died, leaving him alone to face a cruel world where he was mistreated and misunderstood; Mary isn't technically an orphan, but lacking the affection and attention of her parents, she might as well be.

Through her friendship with Max, Mary slowly gains self-esteem enough to pursue a friendship with Damien (Eric Bana), a neighbor boy, and to set goals to achieve her dreams -- but her ultimate success hinges on her betrayal of her friendship with Max, and that nearly costs her everything.

Elliot, continuing his journey of exploring ordinary people and themes of loneliness and acceptance, moves the story along through the vehicle of Max and Mary's letters to each other over the years that chronicle the tirals and travails of their lives and delve into issues including homophobia, sexuality, religion, kleptomania, alcoholism, agorophobia and Asperger's. Along the way, he peppers his tale with moments of quirky humor and weaves it with tragedy; the film has its funny moments, but this is a melodramatic, sad film, although there's also hope and redemption to lighten the load. Elliot conveys the dark tone of the film with a color palette dominated by neutral tones; he gives Mary a sepia-brown world, while Max's world in New York is predominately blacks, greys and white. Occasional splashes of brilliant red (a barette, lipstick, shoes, a pom-pom Mary sends to Max that he thereafter wears on top of his yarmulke) to draw out certain objects.

The visual design of the production is stunning and reflects the time and care the filmmaking team put into creating Max and Mary's worlds; Elliot brings all his characters, even the cat, parakeet and goldfish to life in off-beat and whimsical ways, but even the houses and mailboxes in Mary's neighborhood, and the tall New York buildings around Max's neighborhood, have a life and personality of their own. The music is good throughout, and occasionally clever and brilliant, as in the first time Max types out a reply to Mary on his little typewriter, with light-hearted skipping music augmented by the sounds of a typewriter-turned-musical-instrument. Delightfully droll narration by Barry Humphries augments the tale.

Some may find the tone of Mary and Max too darkly sardonic to be appealing; this isn't a mostly-cheery Wallace and Gromit-type tale appropriate for young children, in spite of the appeal of the claymation characters, as it deals with some heavy themes including paralyzing depression, self-medication through alcohol, and even suicidal tendencies. It's hard to imagine the screenplay for Mary and Max brought to screen with live actors playing the roles; the subject matter -- in particular the aspect of a little girl corresponding with a 40-year-old man in an age with adult predators stalk the internet looking for young prey -- would feel creepy and even exploitative with real people rather than their clay counterparts. The whimsy of the design works to counter the seriousness of the subject matter, and while the flow is sometimes uneven it works in a way that I can't imagine working as well in a different context.

For those who like their serious themes addressed in interesting, even quirky ways, Mary and Max is a departure from the same-old, same-old, and the ending sneaks up and touches the heart unexpectedly. We grow to empathize with Mary and Max and their lonely lives, and appreciate the companionship and hope, however unconventional, they find in each other.