Reviewed by Aaron Haynes

Released at the exact same time as Rotisserie Chicken, You Only Live Until You Die has gone curiously unmentioned on the board while the latter received surprising praise and critical success. The weirdness continued to grow when, upon finally watching it, I discovered that You Only is simultaneously less specialized and more entertaining than Rotisserie Chicken, boasting the first hint of a tongue-in-cheek, erratic, manic energy that we'd later see realized to a much greater potential in Venison Jelly. Where RC mildly amused, You Only engages and entertains in a surprisingly powerful way, showing us a wider scope of the Dee Boned universe.

Like Rotisserie Chicken, this installment doesn't use voices, but it doesn't hurt the film; the dialogue is quirky and fun, and the action certainly speaks for itself. It's here that Russ sets up the running gag that Dee Boned's missions are lined with unnecessarily dangerous obstacles; we're introduced to the self-destructing message that's more common in spy spoofs than any old serious spy movies, only it's a high-tech viewscreen that hovers a few inches in front of Dee Boned's face when he's flat on his back and explodes immediately after the message finished, blasting him through the floor and onto the lower level. It turns out that this is just the setup -- Dee Boned's mission is to wash his boss's laundry, and upon glancing at the laundry basket, there's a message that informs him "This laundry will self-destruct in 60 seconds."

It's only a few minutes long, but the whole thing had me grinning ear to ear. In some ways, You Only calls up the tendency of PAM enthusiasts to construct a series of stop-and-starts in the action, too impatient to stay with any avenue of the action for more than a few seconds before killing the character and introducing a new one, or crashing a car only a few frames after someone gets in and starts driving. But Russ knows how to bound from one object of interest to another without it being hard to follow; the Dee Boned universe is rife with excess complications and obstacles to get in our hero's way, and there's a kind of genius to the way its overblown spy movie conventions go berserk as Dee Boned doggedly attempt to complete some menial task. The movie takes Dee Boned and his mission completely seriously, which is why it's so funny. He can't just walk into the Laundromat, he has to be blasted through the glass doors to slam into a washer and spill water and wet clothes all over the floor. He can't just put a quarter in the machine, he has to toss it into the air and shoot it with the kind of ridiculous accuracy that only exists in overblown action movies so that it flies perfectly into the slot.

Technically, it's a bit dated, but only in scene and effect construction (and then only in the most menial, forgivable ways). The animation is energetic and relentless, with a voice and style all its own, and Russ has a unique way of adding excess detail in some places while leaving the majority of the environment pretty crude. Why this film has gone almost completely unmentioned is a mystery to me. RC was good, but this indicated far more promise for the series than an indulgent one-note skateboarding flick did. To cap it all off, and continuing a very welcome pattern in Russ's work, the final shot is a brilliant punchline that underlines everything about the movie's style; like the pool game in RC or the reaction shot at the end of Venison Jelly, the image of Dee Boned in slow motion is both a great laugh and a brilliant way to disarm any cynicism that might remain among the audience. That's tricky to pull off.

Critical Score: 85/100.
Personal Score: 95/100.