[4][5] Anomalisa follows the British middle-aged customer service expert Michael Stone (David Thewlis), who perceives everyone (Tom Noonan) as identical except for Lisa Hesselman (Jennifer Jason Leigh), whom he meets in a Cincinnati hotel.

He opposed adapting the play into a film, fearing loss of artistic merit, but began exploring the idea in 2012 after incorporating edits to the script.

[7] In 2005, middle-aged English-born lonely customer service expert and motivational speaker Michael Stone travels to Cincinnati, Ohio to promote his latest book at a convention at the Fregoli Hotel.

Michael practices his speech in his room but is haunted by the memory of an angry letter from a former lover, Bella, whom he abruptly left years ago without an explanation.

Michael has a nightmare in which the lower half of his face falls off and the identical people of the world pursue him, claiming they love him and insisting he and Lisa cannot be together.

The first version of Anomalisa was written and performed in 2005 for the Los Angeles run of "Theater of the New Ear", described as "a concert for music and text, or a set of 'sound plays'" by Carter Burwell, who commissioned and scored them.

[8] It was a double bill with Kaufman's Hope Leaves the Theater, and replaced Sawbones, by the Coen Brothers, from the earlier New York run, after that play's actors were unavailable.

[5] The 2005 performance had Thewlis and Leigh sitting on opposite sides of the stage, with Noonan in the middle; Burwell conducted the Parabola Ensemble, and there was a foley artist.

[14] Kaufman and Johnson have described the process of stop-motion animation as "laborious" and found challenges in making the puppets look lifelike and relatable.

[16] Kaufman said the medium of stop-motion underpins the narrative of Anomalisa by drawing attention to small details viewers would not notice in a live-action film.

[24] In the Blu-ray pack, thanks to the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 used in the film's production, ambient sound effects such as the hotel bar background can be perfectly heard and combined with the dialogue.

The website's critical consensus reads: "Anomalisa marks another brilliant and utterly distinctive highlight in Charlie Kaufman's filmography, and a thought-provoking treat for fans of introspective cinema.

[27] In Time Out David Calhoun awarded the film five out of five stars and wrote, "It's what you imagine might have happened if Charlie Kaufman had got his hands on Up in the Air or Lost in Translation.

[29] LA Weekly's Amy Nicholson gave the film an A and wrote, "Kaufman is taking our brains apart and showing us the gears.

"[32] Stephanie Zacharek of Time wrote: "Once you start reckoning with Anomalisa's obsession with self-absorption, the novelty of this one-man pity party begins to wear off.