Rating: 
Summary: Mind-bending
Review: ...is the word. I saw this film in the theater, and... I am not the most inexperienced of viewers. I am a fan of anime, and I have seen many very strange Russian cartoons, but this... Sometimes I simply couldn't believe what I was seeing onscreen. To call this film "wildly inventive" is an understatement. I am tempted to follow Roger Ebert's example and scour a thesaurus for synonyms of "whacked" and "off-kilter," but I'll only say this - If you want to see things you've never seen before, to stare at the TV screen in absolute disbelief, all the while gasping for breath from laughter, then this film is definitely for you.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Experiment in Animation, A Dull Movie
Review: Picture a beautiful painting. It's hanging in a gallery for the entire world to see. It's visually stunning, and magically imaginative, and yet there's something off about it. Maybe there are some extraneous details in this piece of art, maybe it just doesn't glow as much as you wished it did. After sitting through THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE I can safely say it's a beautiful experiment in color and animation, but a dull ride most of the way.It's the story of a doting Grandmother and her Grandson. He doesn't say much, he doesn't do much and so she buys him a dog. While her Grandson likes the Dog, his real dream is to have a bicycle. So the doting grandmother buys him one. The Grandson becomes a great cyclist and even rides in the Tour De France. One day when thugs kidnap him, the grandmother and dog must save her grandson, from the evil criminal underground in a far off city called Belleville. Let me tell you there are moments of shear delight buried in this animated film. In fact the final ten minutes are breathtaking. I loved the chase through the streets of Belleville. I loved the criminal underworld. I especially loved the Grandmother's fantastical trip over the ocean in a paddle-boat. This is one imaginative film. I also loved the Triplets of Belleville themselves. These three elderly women who are so off kilter and silly, I loved how they ate frogs and threw grenades, and made wonderful music together. But I was the most enchanted by the scenes in which Grandma must first react to them. I even loved the silly Dog, and his dream of riding on a subway train and not having to just bark at it. THE TRIPLETTES OF BELLEVILLE is just so jammed packed with little moments of sheer delight, and brilliance. THE TRIPPLETTES OF BELLEVILLE also has one of the most enchanting musical scores I've heard in a long time. From the Big Band Sounds of the 30's, to a STOMP style jam session, and who can forget the myriad of other sounds from classical to more traditional French songs. This film is brimming with top notch musical moments. But alas the wonderful pieces make a very shallow whole. This movie feels more like an experiment in animation, than a cohesive film. The early moments of the film drag on and on. There's a scene that goes on for minutes, where you just wanted to say to yourself `give the dog some damn food.' I found myself checking my watch when I should have been longing to see what was next. I give hearty congratulations to director Slyvain Chomet for creating a daring world. I just wish I could have stopped the movie and gotten up a couple of times, because it drags and drags when it really doesn't have to. This is an animation lovers dream, but a casual filmgoers nightmare. In fact a group of teenagers with their mother picked up and left about a half-hour into the thing. I think they were hoping for FINDING NEMO and got a film that is more about moments than story. So how do you scale a film like this? Cause, I think it has moments that border on brilliance, and yet overall I was bored by its execution. As an experiment in animation its great, as a movie it's kind of dull. So I'm torn. Note: By the way another thing that got me a little steamed was the fact the Belleville, which seemed based on NEW YORK CITY, was filled with a bunch of fat Americans. Ouch.... Your Day Will Come France!! ***** (Out of 5) As an experiment in animation **1/2 (out of 3) As an overall movie
Rating: 
Summary: Passive Viewers Need Not Apply
Review: This is a challenging film. It's the kind of film that doesn't give you a clue at first just what the devil is going on. Twenty-somethings, I'm sure, will not understand the images at the beginning of the show. They will not recognize Josephine Baker or Fred Astaire. I began to finally see that, as usual with foreign films, the American title has nothing to do with the movie. The story is of an old woman who lives with her little grandson. Knowing the boy is disinterested and lonely he comes alive when he gets a bicycle, and grow up to be a cyclist in the Tour de France. What happens after that...well, it took a very weird imagination to carry it off. There are times when the film begs for subtitles, but for the most part it is left for the audience to figure things out on their own. That's why it's challenging. Passive movie watchers need not see this film. The animation is very European in style, which is no surprise with it being Belgian. I liked the old-fashioned feel of the film. It's a welcome break from the computer-generated stuff. I found the rain effects and the ocean scene breathtakingly realistic. As an artist myself, I was appreciative of the backdrops of ink and watercolor, rendered like beautiful paintings. The people as depicted in the film were great, and they reminded me of something Gary Larsen would have drawn. The music is great fun. I love world music and I actually have a Toots Thielman CD in my possession. One of my favorite moments is when the three old ladies find the grandmother and her dog and get into this cool stomp dance with their signature song! The Triplets of Belleville reminded me so much of The Pink Panther Show. For those way too young to remember it, The Pink Panther Show cartoon series had nothing really to do with the Peter Sellers movies, and it came out when I was a teenager in the 70s. I believe it was one of the last animated shows geared toward adults that didn't bombard the viewer with morality lessons. Most interestingly, the entire show had no dialog, a fact unheard of in this day and age. I watched the Triplets on a night when there were only three other people besides me in the room at AMC Theatres in Oklahoma City. I have to admit, though, that being the lone African-American in such a small audience, seeing Ms. Baker attacked by sex-crazed men made me a little uneasy, and I tried to put on a poker face throughout. I had been encouraged to see this film from a cineaste friend of mine. He admitted to me that he and a friend had to see this a couple times, because there were parts that were over his head as well. I'm happy I'm not alone in this. I think I'll need to see it more than once, too. I've been reading a couple of other reviews by people who seem to have way more background knowledge on this film than I do. I don't think one should need to research a film before they see it. I don't think knowing who Jacques what's-his-name is helps much as far as the enjoyment of the film. There are things I did get, such as the similarity to New York City, and the obesity of Americans. I think I'll wait until it comes out on DVD to see it again, because I think I'll need an audio commentary to sort of explain the things I don't get because of cultural differences. It's an enjoyable enough film by itself, but I do think there is something I'm not getting that has to do with European culture, and I think I'll need that background to get anything besides a face-value opinion of it.
Rating:
Summary: Better and shorter than Nemo
Review: Don't get me wrong, I like Nemo. I cried too. However, The Triplets of Belleville is an unusual storyline (outright odd) and it is done with great animation. This is not at all a Japan anime flick. I don't know if the DVD will have subtitles as the movie has none - not that is is needed - there is very little french spoken in this movie - subtitles might get in the way. The music is great and this is one movie where I either need to go back to the small screen art house theatres and see it a few more times or I get the DVD and watch it a bunch more times on the big projection TV to see all the wonderful effort and creativity this movie displays.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful animation
Review: Fascinating story, well - illustrated. Can watch it again and again. The animation is as interesting as the plot. Wonderful music as well.
Rating:
Summary: A Cycling Cult Classic in the Making
Review: Saw this in the theater yesterday - not since "Breaking Away" has there been a movie that captures the beautiful oddness of hard-core cyclists. The bodies of the cycling characters are perfectly exaggerated - emaciated upper bodies and swollen quads and calves. The grandmother trueing a wheel by spinning it on top of a model of the Eiffel Tower and measuring spoke tension with a tuning fork... the post-workout massage that grandmother gives Champion. It's too good.
Rating: 
Summary: Makes For An Interesting Rendezvous...
Review: Due to reading two or so reviews and combining those thoughts with my own inferences and expectations, I went in to the theater with a very different vision of what "The Triplets of Belleville" was going to be like. After the credits rolled and I got the chance to truly contemplate what I had just seen with my fellow moviegoers, it almost made me feel guilty that I wasn't as estatic as they seemed to be, and made me think that perhaps I couldn't quite grasp the concept or overall point of this movie. Directed by Sylvain Chomet, the French animated "Triplets of Belleville" follows the story of Madame Souza who tries desperately to please her sullen grandson. After failing with attempts to interest him in such things as puppies and toy trains she notices his fervor for bicycles, and buys him one, much to his delight. Flash forward to a decade or two later, with Champion a changed man, no longer the chubby boy of his youth, but lean, packed with muscle and determination. He enters in the Tour de France, the most prestigious race in cycling, with his persistent grandmother following behind him in her van, but is subsequently kidnapped by the French mafia. After finding his abandoned bicycle on the side of the road, Madame Souza, and the family's larger than life dog Bruno, go on a journey to Belleville to rescue him, with the help from the once-famous spinster singing trio "The Triplets of Belleville". One thing, I will say, that I found most charming about this movie was the animation. Simply stunning, each character is completely unique and exaggerated, which was remarkably refreshing visually. The film, rich in color, and dripping with personality, is extremely detailed in the settings, and is truly one large caricature; indulging stereotypes. I enjoyed the jabs at American culture: the voluptuous Statue of Liberty, the grotesquely large hamburgers served at the crowded diner, and the general obesity of those depicted in the United States. However, even though I found some scenes to be humorous and charming, overall I found myself very bored throughout. Perhaps it was the lack of dialogue that didn't hold my interest, or the fact I could see exactly where the plot was heading, which made it somewhat tedious to continue watching. I also didn't quite understand the goal of involving Triplets of Belleville sisters in the plot to rescue Champion. It was hard for me to explain why, but their presence in the story seemed pointless to me, and I feel the film could have done just fine without them. "The Triplets of Belleville" is certainly a very interesting film, with some of the most off-the-wall caricatures, creative animation, and a wonderful soundtrack (especially the title jazzy number "Belleville Rendezvous"), but to be honest it didn't spark my interest as much as I wanted it to. However, to someone reading this and contemplating seeing this film, I would recommend to not walk into the theater with any preconcieved notions from any review (including my own)of "Triplets of Belleville". It is truly an opinion piece, and is open to many different interpretations based on its very much unique style.
Rating:
Summary: A little treasure of European animation
Review: This film is a little treasure and illustrates how the world has not yet been dominated by Disney-style animation. This is a very imaginative movie that follows the tale of a Portuguese lady from France to North America (Bellville) to save her cyclist son from the French Mafia. The muisc is great. If you are worried about whether the DVD you are buying has the French or English soundtrack don't fret. There's almost no dialog, so it doesn't matter.
Rating:
Summary: Triplets of Belleville
Review: A gem! By presenting these highly imaginative 'constructed' 2-dimensional cartoon characters as objects, we viewers are invited and challenged to stretch our imagination to continue the process of creativity so artfully begun by Sylvain Chomet. As one reviewer alluded to, we're moving along in the whole process while viewing the movie, and I might add, long afterward. From comparing the 'lines' of the puffy rounded hamburger eaters with the sharply delineated frog eating triplets to finding liminal spaces between the 'norms' of these 'superstretched characters'and their 'society' with 'ours', this movie is a delight. At one level, we might see 'French' and 'American' cultures. This movie merits a deeper look as it examines humanity or human foibles whatever the culture might be. 'Finding Nemo' presents a romanticized vision while 'The Triplets of Belleville' provides a challenging one.
Rating:
Summary: A triumph of personal filmmaking.
Review: In my college days, I loved to go to film festivals to see the wildly imaginative animation of such masters as Raoul Servais, Paul Driessen and the various auteurs from the National Film Board of Canada. Sylvain Chomet's "The Triplets of Belleville" brings back those heady days. My respect for Chomet is boundless: not only has he made a magnificently wacky and poignant feature-length cartoon, but he's actually getting paying audiences to line up to marvel at his intensely personal, idiosyncratic vision. Trying to sum up the plot in a capsule review would resemble Monty Python's "Summarize Proust" contest. Let's just say that besides the title characters--an elderly, eccentric trio of singing sisters--the main characters include Madame Souza, a doughty, clubfooted old woman; Champion, her beloved, terminally melancholy, bicycle-racer grandson; and Bruno, their faithful but somewhat fussy dog. Add to this some sinister Mafiosi, a (literal) rat man, a fawning headwaiter, exploding frogs, a trip across the Atlantic in a paddle boat and cameos from Fred Astaire, Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, Glenn Gould and Jacques Tati. "The Triplets of Belleville" is in a dead heat with "Amelie" and "Zazie Dans le Metro" as the most French movie ever made, right down to the portrayal of Belleville, a distinctly Gallic take on New York. (Mirroring a common--and sadly true--French criticism of Americans, all the residents of Belleville are in dire need of a membership in Weight Watchers, including the Statue of Liberty.) Despite all the wackiness on the screen, the overall mood of "The Triplets of Belleville" is one of wistful melancholy--as exemplified by Champion, whose personal motto seems to be, "I can't go on, I'll go on." Except for occasional bursts of Franglais, this is very little dialogue in "The Triplets of Belleville." However, the lovely, eclectic music of Benoit Charest (especially the jazzy, energizing opening song, "Belleville Rendezvous") more than makes up for that lack. Anybody who is interested in animation as an art form will find "The Triplets of Belleville" fascinating and beguiling. (Be sure to stay to the end of the credits, or else you'll miss what may be the best sight gag in the entire movie!)
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