It features Catherine Tate as a psychotic drama queen intent on world domination, David Walliams as a camp hair louse and David Hockney, naturally, as a superhero simply called "the artist".
Perhaps more surprising, the Tate Movie Project, which is part of the Cultural Olympiad, was made with the involvement of more than 34,000 children.The result is a 30-minute animation called The Itch of the Golden Nit made by the Tate and Aardman Animations. Something of a stellar cast also includes Miranda Hart, Harry Enfield, Rik Mayall, Alexei Sayle, David Tennant, Vic Reeves and Jane Horrocks.
Children aged five to 13 were involved throughout the process, from submitting ideas and script lines, to making their own drawings and voting on which characters should be in or out.
Jane Burton, creative director of Tate Media, said the team was extremely happy with the result. "We wanted it to be something that people would enjoy watching as much as the children enjoyed making it," she said.
Around 2,000 children will see their own work in the film. "It has been a collaborative effort from the get-go," said Burton. "We've seen it more as a big community movie crew that has crowdsourced the film."
Burton admiited that with so many children involved it could have been a recipe for disaster. "I was quite nervous at the outset that we might end up with a soup of disparate parts – but that, I think, is where the genius of Aardman comes in."
The film has as its hero 11-year-old Beanie who embarks on a mission to save his parents from Evil Stella (Catherine Tate). At the film's centre is the eponymous Golden Nit (Walliams) who needs to be returned to his rightful place in the sun for the universe to be saved.
There are lots of gags with easily enough toilet humour to keep adults as well as children amused.
The film will be shown on BBC2 this Saturday as well as featuring at regional galleries and Tate Modern over the summer.
