The 2017 Chinese animated film "Have a Nice Day" is most commonly compared to the works of Quentin Tarantino, the prolific director of live action crime drama comedies such as "Resovoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction." Too often an up-and-coming director will be compared to an existing superstar, be it Tarantino, Spielberg, Scorsese, or Miyazaki, often at the insult of both the newcomer and the veteran for such an over-simplification. However, I do think the comparision is appropriate here: more so than any other work I've seen, director Liu Jian's animated film feels very much like a lost Tarantino script. Little hints in the writing suggest that Jian has much of the same passion for cinema and gangster films that Tarantino cited as a driving force in his early career, further making the comparison relevant. It is for this reason that "Have a Nice Day" is a worthwhile watch, overcoming much (but not all) of the limitations that come with independent feature animation with a limited budget and crew."Have a Nice Day" received just enough press around the globe for animation fans to take notice, such that one would be forgiven to assume it was the director's debut. I was surprised to see that this was the second film to come from Jian's animation studio, the first being a similar film called "Piercing I" back in 2010. Despite its acclaim at a few film festivals, it appears to never have received a home-video release in China, let alone elsewhere in the world. "Have a Nice Day" might have been doomed to a similar fate, for while it was able to debut at the Berlin Animation Festival in 2017, it was withdrawn from the following Annecy festival in France a few months later under claims that it did not yet have "government clearance" to be screened internationally. This perhaps gave the film a bit more free press, as immediately art-house film fans disapproved China's strict laws on consumerism media and connections in and out of the country, and the film would be rumored to have bouts of violence and political commentary that was deemed too extreme. Eventually, a bare-bones DVD from Strand Releasing (an American company that specialized in international art-house action and horror films, with seemingly no other animated movies in their vast and niche catelog) would be released in America, and upon watching the movie I think the allegations were a bit blown out of proportion: violence occurs only rarely and in short bursts, often off camera, and its depiction of China seems no different than other Asian urban cities, the only degrading comment being the assumption that South Korea has "better plastic surgeons" than what China could offer. The lack of violence or politics doesn't take away from the film's enjoyment, however. Like Tarantino's films, "Have a Nice Day" builds an atmosphere of suspense through simple scenery and seemingly random small talk in its characters to build the world. We know someone is going to get killed at some point, so hearing calm conversations between kingpins, thieves and soon-to-be victims is palpable. The story starts with Xiao Zhang abandoning an illegal money delivery halfway through the trip, by stealing the bag of cash at knife-point, with the intention to take his fiancee to Korea to fix a botched plastic surgery job. Characters from other threads collide, from the original mob leader who wants his cash back, to the cool hired hitman tasked to retreive it, his fiancee's relative and boyfriend who overhear the existance of the money, and a restaurant owner couple (one of whom is a keen inventor in his spare time). They all want the money for different reasons, and will do whatever is necessary to get it. While conflict is inevitable, it's really the conversations in between where we can appreciate the story's dark sense of humor and the hopeless concrete jungle the characters live in, most of it surprisingly well written. Only a couple odd points (one being a short fantasy sequence of starting a new life in a paradise, the second being a three-minute shot of live-action water waves to show the tranquility and daze of a passed-out man) ruin the pacing, but even they feel like cool flourishes of the director's style.The production values of the film are where the film suffers a bit. The visuals are surprisingly effective, as all of the background shots the film relies heavily on are maticuously detailed, as if rotoscoped overtop live-action reference material, but painted in a flat style that matches the animation style. The characters themselves also look rotoscoped, which is not necessarily an attractive design choice but an appropriate creative one. The music is sparse, typically the sound relies on quiet streets with character dialogue and perhaps a buzzing fly, but what little music is used sounds great, Chinese pop/rock songs from "The Shanghai Restoration Project" that I wouldn't mind playing in my headphones on repeat. 
So where is the flaw? It's in the limited animation. It's one thing to deliberately avoid shots that require a lot of movement: "Have a Nice Day" cuts between camera shots often to avoid having to show characters walking or moving much from their initial pose. But when animation does occur, be it a moving car or a mosquito, it is incredibly jumpy, as if the creators of "South Park" decided they wanted to make a serious movie at ten years old. The Internet is full of crude and lazy animation, both for cultural improvement and determent, but I do not think I have seen animated movement look as bad or as lazy as what I've seen in this movie. Admittedly, the film didn't make enough in the global box office to justify hiring more than a couple animators on a movie, but even if working alone, to see animation this poor is inexcusable, or else future works should consider using completely static shots as many older short films used to do, as a motion-comic perhaps. Or even as a live-action feature, since no part of the film's story insists that animation was the best medium, even if it would mean losing the frame-worthy background shots of buildings and street corners of urban China.Even though it can be difficult to watch the animation, the writing and direction are significantly strong enough to make this an easy recommendation to curious film fans. It isn't nearly as political or controversal as much of its press would like you to believe, and its limited production values make it impossible to compare to the likes of commerical or independent animation work from Japan, Europe or the USA, "Have a Nice Day" is still good dark fun, and I am hopeful for the future of its director.