“my Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea”: Laughs Amid The Waves

The plot of “My Entire High School Sinking Into the Sea,” the feature debut of indie comics artist and writer Dash Shaw, is pretty well encapsulated in the title. Set inside the four-story building that is the home of Tides High, the crudely animated yet cleverly written comedy focuses on five characters struggling to save themselves when a cliff gives way beneath that structure, which plunges intact into the ocean. The hero, high school journalist Dash Shaw (voice of Jason Schwartzman), is one part of a small band of smart, smart-alecky and bizarrely resourceful people that includes his best friend, Assaf (Reggie Watts); their editor on the school paper, Verti (Maya Rudolph); a popular Mean Girl named Mary (Lena Dunham); and the self-explanatory Lunch Lady Lorraine (Susan Sarandon, in a delightfully tough vocal performance). Dash is the kind of hyperarticulate, self-aware yet clueless character that Schwartzman played in “Rushmore.” “I love turgid prose,” he says, before demonstrating that affinity, in response to a comment by one of his companions: “Mary’s words sunk into our hero, like urine staining a pair of tighty-whities,” Dash says, as if writing their adventures in his head. In a sense, as a stand-in for the director, he is.