A drunken man passes an art gallery that is, you guessed it, closed on Mondays, but gives in to curiosity when he discovers the front door has been left open. As the drunk stumbles around the exhibition room, squinting at the various paintings and sculptures, they come to life in odd and disturbing ways.
Tropes:
- The Alcoholic: The man is drunk in public. He's carrying around a bottle, staggering. He also has a red face that's suggestive of an alcoholic.
- Ambiguous Ending: Was the drunk a human who got trapped in the gallery? Or was he a statue brought to life like the other art pieces? And if so, was he trying to escape when he staggered for the door or did he willingly go back to his plinth?
- Bowdlerise: In some releases, the words "Usual Crap" are omitted from the museum's event list, and the word "Hell" is edited out of the drunkard's reactions.
- Chekhov's Gun: The title. How is the man visiting the exhibition when it is closed Mondays? Because he's actually part of the exhibition.
- Deranged Animation: The man encounters a painting that plays jazz music, and a sculpture of a computer with lips that undergoes a series of bizarre transformations.
- The Ending Changes Everything: The man looks like he's staggering out of the exhibition, when instead he climbs up onto a plinth and becomes a brass sculpture. It's heavily implied he's one of the works of art who escaped briefly.
- Excuse Plot: There isn't much of a story; the film is really just a showcase for what claymation can do.
- Names Given to Computers: When activated, the computer sculpture identifies itself as a replica of the Model 505, Type P Electro-Brain.
- Offscreen Inertia: In-universe; the scrubbing woman in the painting laments having to miserably work on her knees for the rest of her days.
- Pink Elephants: The various works of art come to life in the regular Pink Elephant way as the drunk man stares at them. Although the ending suggests that this trope might not be in play at all.
- Stop Motion: The first "Claymation" to win an Oscar.
- True Art Is Angsty: In-Universe, as the cleaning woman tearfully wishes her artist hadn't believed this, because he has painted her to be forever working on her knees, never knowing life's joys.
