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The Triplets of Belleville

The Triplets of Belleville

List Price: $24.96
Your Price: $18.72
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: In a trance.
Review: What a wonderful film. Such a change from most animated films that are based on mostly computer animation. Madame Souza was caring , woman with such energy. Bruno the dog was so funny. The movie should have won the Oscar,and the music i thought for sure would win for best song. The lines and colors are so mesmerizing. I was left in a trance by the end. The story was truly heartfelt

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Why can't Americans make interesting animated films?
Review: It's an odd, quirky, and diverting film. The animation is breathtaking, the story is peculiar and engaging, and the music is terrific. At a time when real animation--the hand drawn art that eschews realism in favor of the surreal or ideosyncratic--appears to be a dying art, this film tells us why "Finding Nemo" and similar slick schlock is hardly worth the celluloid. No, Triplets isn't a masterpiece. It's simply very, very good. There's virtually no dialogue, and none is needed since the story is told in masterful rich illustration.

Bravo.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A better DVD would've deserved a purchase
Review: The Triplets of Belleville is a movie that I want to see not merely once, or twice, or three times, but repeatedly over a long timespan. Not that it's some sort of masterpiece, but because it is too odd and beautiful (to look at it, anyway) of a movie to rent, watch once or twice, then discard.
The featurettes are nice but we need more. The selected commentary is nice but I want more. I want a two-disc version of this thing, with more detail about how it was made, with a full-length commentary, and with that Salvador Dali short than was played during the film's theatrical run. I digested the DVD over a weekend, but the only reason to go back would be to watch the movie again. It's a good movie that actually warrants those two disc special editions. However, the look and sound of the DVD is top-notch, so if you really love the movie you probably already have it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Weird and wonderful film!
Review: The Triplets of Belleville is unlike any movie I have seen. With hardly any dialogue, the movie is driven by the wonderful score and beautiful animation. The music is infectious and is what led me to view the movie in the first place. With so little dialogue, the viewer is drawn into the story and the film, able to better appreciate the rich animation and quirky humor and satire of the film's creators. The film also offers a nice french critque of American society, with a look at a fanciful New York city. This movie is strange, but wonderful. If you want to view something out of the ordinary, watch this fil,.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Horribly Bizarre, But Great Cartoon
Review: No matter how many times I watch this, I just can't really get it. There is no dialogue whatsoever. Simply strange music, strange sounds, and a jungle-sounding song. The story is strange. A grandmother tries to cheer up her grandson. She gives him a bike. Skip to when he's an adult. He is giong to be in the Tour De France. But when he falls exhausted by the roadside, a group of box-shaped gangsters take ahold of him and put him on a ship to the teeming metropolis of Belleville. There the grandmother runs into a frog-eating, outdated singing trio, who help her find her grandson. This has to be one of the most bizarre, most funny movies of all time.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A new treat for fans of animation from the wacky French
Review: In former days, that is to say "Once upon a time," there was a lonely little boy named Champion who ended up living with his grandmother, Madame Souza. The only thing that made the little boy happy was his bicycle, so she decided to train him to become a competitive racer, and she trained him very hard. Years later he enters the Tour de France, but during the race he is kidnapped and it is up to Madame Souza, Champion's dog Bruno, and the Triplets of Belleville to rescue Champion.

"The Triplets of Belleville" is an animated film written and directed by Sylvain Chomet and is there were other animated French films like this one I am sure I would have heard mention of it before now. This film is neither a Disney cartoon nor a Japanese anime, so trying to find a visual reference point for the animation is a bit difficult. I keep thinking of Chas. Addams characters running around in a Mobius drawn world, and both of those points are off the mark. Whatever you consider the French people to be, cute and cuddly would not be the descriptors of choice for either them or this film. You will find references to "Les Vacanes de M. Hulot" and "Gertie the Dinosaur" in posters on the wall of the Triplets' apartment, but that will not help you pigeonhole the look of this film or what is going on in it for that matter.

Still, you have to say that "The Triplets of Belleville" is a way that delights the audience in a way entirely different from "Finding Nemo," "Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi," and Shrek, the three films that have won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature since it was created ("Triplets" was nominated but lost out to "Nemo"). Belleville is also compromised of three parts, constructed in equal measure from Paris, New York, and Montreal. This is a foreign film in which you do not need to worry about reading subtitles because the dialogue is minimalistic at best and where a newspaper is the first instrument in an inspired musical number. Chomet even throws Josephine Baker into the mix, which is certainly a treat.

"The Triplets of Belleville" is weird and quirky, with grotesque characters and disturbing images. So if that appeals to you, whether we are talking animation or other cinematic forms, then you have to check this one out. Just be forewarned that you will be tapping your toes to the Oscar nominated song "The Triplets of Belleville" for several hours after the movie is over.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Grandmother's Determination
Review: Visual experience? Yes. Entertaining? Yes. A little strange and sometimes hilarious? Double yes. A grandmother's love for a grandson starts with her raising him from a child to an adult, helping him train for "the" bicycle race, and then with her having to leave home and across the ocean to rescue him from kidnappers.
This is not your typical animated film. Great French film (all visual, no subtitles, the characters do not talk) with visual storytelling and sounds. Great characters (and characteristics although some may find the resemblance to America/Americans and the French grandson's appearance a little overly exaggerated), but Grandma (Madame Souza) is definitely the star of the entire film. Excellent detail throughout the film and especially with the attention given to grandma when she adjusts her eyeglasses. Grandma has the patience of most grandmothers, and the only time she briefly loses that patience is at the end of the film - she uses her club foot against the bad guys.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Reverse character development
Review: This movie starts off very well. Unfortunately, the boy's character, who is initially quite charming, becomes zombie like. Sadly, I'm not exagerating. I find that one element ruins the movie, despite the rest of it being otherwise well done.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Tripley Terrific!
Review: I don't recall the last time a movie made me feel like cheering. This was gorgeous and poignant. Sweet, funny, sad, tres wonderful. See it now!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Utterly Charming, Bizarre, and Fascinating to Behold.
Review: "The Triplets of Belleville" is a fantastically imaginative animated film from French director Sylvain Chomet. Our story seems to begin in 1940s rural France, where a grandmother raising her young grandson, Champion, discovers that the boy loves bicycles. Champion grows up, his grandmother training him for cycling greatness, as the countryside around him turns into a busy suburb. While competing in the Tour de France, Champion is kidnapped and spirited across the ocean to Belleville, pursued closely by his grandmother and dog, Bruno. Once in Belleville, Grandma enlists the help of a trio of eccentric stage performers who were once immensely popular as the Triplets of Belleville in a plot to free her grandson.

"The Triplets of Belleville" was animated both by hand and by computer. It's simply a fascinating film to watch. Every frame is filled with imaginative detail. And if you knew every detail of the plot beforehand, "Triplets" still wouldn't fail to surprise. There is a little bit of everything in this film: music, drama, action, comedy, fantastic visuals....everything, that is, except dialogue. The film has lots of sound, but only two lines of dialogue from the main characters, which you can choose to hear in English or Spanish, but oddly not in French. Director Sylvain Chomet considers "The Triplets of Belleville" to be essentially a silent film. Ironically, this animated "silent" succeeds without intertitles. The characters' states of mind are clearly expressed through their faces and actions. There is no need for words. Maybe this is so easily accomplished because "Triplets" characters aren't supposed to impress us as real people, but it's remarkable even so. I don't think I'll ever forget how Grandmother expresses her dedication to her grandson by pushing her glasses up on her face. I've rarely seen so much meaning in one gesture in a live action film. "The Triplets of Belleville" is such a remarkable thing to look at that it really isn't to be missed.

The DVD: Bonus features include two documentaries, three scenes with audio commentary, and an original music video of the title song "Belleville Rendez-Vous". "The Making of The Triplets of Belleville" is a 15-minute documentary that includes interviews with writer/director Sylvain Chomet, composer Benoît Charest, one of the film's illustrators, and its Art Director. In the 5-minute "The Cartoon According to Sylvain Chomet", Chomet explains his animation technique. There are three scenes available with commentary from Sylvain Chomet and Benoît Charest. The commentary is in French and subtitled in English. I recommend the "Making of" documentary, and, if you want more, the audio commentaries.


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