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The Triplets of Belleville - 11/26/03 - PG-13 - 78m
Director: Sylvain Chomet
Written by: Sylvain Chomet
Studio: Sony Pictures
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JEF
Wow, I was really let down by this film. Maybe It’s my own fault, maybe I built it up in my mind so much that it would have never lived up to the platform I had it on. Or maybe simply put, there were things in this film that just plain annoyed me.
Storyline: Meet Champion… a young boy who is living with his grandmother named Souza. Champion is rather glum and his grandmother is looking for hobbies or interests to try and get him motivated about something. She even gets him a puppy named Bruno to help cheer him up, but it doesn’t seem to help. (Not to mention that the puppy is a typical “hound dog” who seems to have the same glum personality of Champion). Finally, Souza finds something that interests the boy… riding bicycles. Fast forward, and through diligent training Champion is headed for the Tour De France bike Race. During the race some sinister characters are introduced and the plot thickens.
I guess I’ll start with the positive here… the animation was very well done. An incredible blend of traditional 2d animation with computer 3d animation. So much so that I had to do a little digging on the web to verify that they used computers. Some really nice character works, from the tiny grandmother to the large hulking black jacket gangsters, to I think my favorite the bent over backwards Maitre D' in the restaurant. A really nice overall style to the films characters and backgrounds.
So other than that, the film didn’t do much else for me. I was particularly annoyed at it in fact. The dog Bruno had an issue with trains (slightly traumatized as a puppy), and would bark every time a train would go by. At first this was cute and funny, but after the 4th or 5th time it started to wear on you, then by the 7th or 8th time It was like having a next door neighbors dog barking at 2am and you wish it would just shut up! I don’t quite understand why the creator would choose to put an annoying character throughout the film. This brings up another item that I found annoying, the repetition factor. Often times with animated films repetition is used because it saves time and money in production because you don’t have to redraw each frame over and over. But the creator of this film, used repetition I think to be funny, and it just didn’t work for me. For example, the dog would here the clock chime at every 15-minute interval and would make a strenuous journey up the stairs just so he could bark out the window at the train. This event was shown over and over again. The Grandmother with her use of the whistle for training Champion again was annoying.
The song… When I saw the trailer the song just stuck in my head. A real catchy little melody that you find yourself tapping your foot to. In fact, this song is up for an Academy award this year. But… this was the only song played throughout the film. Granted there were different versions of it, like the stage performance, the impromptu jam session under the bridge, to the show put on in the style of “Stomp” using a newspaper, vacuum, and refrigerator wire shelf. But again, it was the same song over and over.
This was a film that technically we walked out on. I had no idea how long the film was before I started watching it, and after about 70 minutes I had had it. I kept waiting for it to get better, and it wasn’t.
So I turned to Lyn and said, “lets go, I’m done.”
So he said, “Are you sure?”
I said “yep” and put my coat on.
We left the theatre, and were walking down the hall when Lyn said, “you know it ends in like 5 minutes…”
Like I said I didn’t know it, for all I knew it would have been another hour long, so he said, “I have to see the end since it’s only 5 minutes.”
So with that, we turned around, went back in, and stood by the door for the remaining 5 minutes. (Note it is about 80 minutes long).
A warning if you plan to see this in spite of this review… there is no dialogue in the film. Ok, there were a handful of sentences here or there, but for the most part there is no speaking.
So all in all, just a big let down for me. I publicly apologize to Lyn also for suggesting this film to see; I don’t think he was all that thrilled to see it to begin with.
C'est La Vie
Jef
