The Triplets of Belleville movie review, Sylvain Chomet, Michéle Caucheteux, Jean-Claude Donda, Michel Robin, Monica Viegas. Review by Rob Blackwelder ©SPLICEDwire

'BELLEVILLE' BEAUTIFUL, BRILLIANTLY BIZARRE
A scene from 'The Triplets of Belleville'
Buy movie posters at AllPosters.com
Courtesy Photo
"THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE"
***1/2 stars
80 minutes | Rated: PG-13
LIMITED: Friday, December 26, 2003
Written & directed by Sylvain Chomet

Voices of Michéle Caucheteux, Jean-Claude Donda, Michel Robin, Monica Viegas



This film is on the Best of 2003 list.


 COUCH CRITIQUE
   SMALL SCREEN SHRINKAGE: 25%
   WIDESCREEN: A MUST

This movie is literally all visual - there's almost no dialogue - so the widescreen version is the only way to go. But otherwise, it still grabs you on the small screen, even if it doesn't engulf you in its world as it did on the big screen. But watch with the lights out completely, and that will be a big help in transporting you.

   VIDEO RELEASE: 05.04.2004
 DVD SPOTLIGHT
Something is out-of-whack with this DVD. Don't worry - everything plays fine. But it has two strange problems:

1) The box says there is a select-scenes commentary track, and as near as I can tell, it does not. There are only 2 audio tracks - English and Spanish for the film's almost non-existant (and unimportant) dialogue - and there is nothing in the disc's menus about commentary.

2) When you go to play the movie, you should cue up from Chapter One, otherwise you have to sit through the FBI warnings, etc., and the strange card that says the film has been modified to fit your screen - even though it has not.

The features the DVD does actually have: Two midly interesting short making-of featurettes covering different aspects of the animation.

OTHER NOTABLE BONUS MATERIAL
Trailer.

SOUND & PICTURE
Both are fine, although the picture doesn't look crisp because of the animation style.


  BUY IT HERE
SPECS
RATIO: 1.78:1 (16x9 enhanced)
DUBS: Spanish
SUBS: none Ń doesn't need them

DVD RATING: **



 LINKS for this film
Official site
at movies.yahoo.com
at Rotten Tomatoes
at Internet Movie Database
Watch the trailer (apple.com)
Innovative, wholly unpredictable cartoon blows a critic's mind

By Rob Blackwelder

A beautifully and brilliantly bizarre, near-silent cartoon from France, "The Triplets of Belleville" is a surreal wonder revolving around a back-of-the-pack Tour de France biker who is kidnapped by a midget mafioso's morphed-together henchmen to be part of a weird criminal carnival attraction.

The curiously beguiling concoction of innovative comic book artist Sylvain Chomet, it's a film that pays wiggly stylistic homage to Betty Boop and other early cartoons while creating an idiosyncratic and darkly whimsical world all its own in which an ocean-crossing rescue attempt is mounted by the biker's diminutive, gimpy, mustachioed grandmother, with the help of his spindly-legged, overweight childhood dog and a trio of aged Vaudeville singers.

Chomet's charming, visually cluttered realm of exaggerated bodies and elongated buildings is so imaginative and vividly realized that you could freeze any frame and spend an hour picking through its details, and his story is so unconventional as to be wholly unpredictable -- even to a seasoned, cynical movie critic. I apologize for the thesarus-bomb of 50-cent adjectives, but I'm at a loss for more evocative words. I've never seen anything like it before and I can't wait to see it again.



ORDER IT NOW


Buy from Amazon


More new releases!

or Search for
 




SEARCH SPLICEDwire
 
powered by FreeFind
SPLICEDwire home
Online Film Critics Society
©SPLICEDwire
All Rights Reserved
Return to top
Current Reviews
SPLICEDwire Home