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January 13, 2007
Light the Trip Fantastic: The Triplets of Belleville
If you're lookin for a surreal experience, that will leave you feeling like you've just eaten a decadent dark chocolate dessert, you should rent The Triplets of Belleville. It's disorienting and intoxicating.
You could read a straight review of this film and learn all about it's most interesting plot turns. Or, you could just hearken back to the Academy Awards show that featured the title song of the movie and think "huh; maybe that's a movie I should put into my queue." I'm not going to bother telling you the plot - it's sorta beside the point, even though it's the whole point.
I will warn you - there is very little dialogue in the movie. About two lines. And while those two lines were originally in French, now they're spoken in English with French accents. Which leaves you scanning for subtitles for a few seconds until your brain picks up the fact that those are English words.
It's the trippiest movie I've seen in years. And it made me feel like I'd gone to another place even though I was soberly sitting in my living room. I highly recommend it.
Rotten Tomatoes listing (93% approval)
Ebert's review. This is actually one of the best Ebert reviews I've read in a long time. Here's the last graph:
Some of my faithful readers went to see "Songs from the Second Floor" on my recommendation. "Triplets" comes from a similar mindset, but is told in a manic fever, and is animated. Imagine Felix the Cat with firecrackers tied to his tail, in a story involving the French nephew and aunt of the Reservoir Dogs, and a score by Spike Jones. No, the other Spike Jones.
I could link to A.O. Scott's review or Kenneth Turan's review (both of which I read before writing this post), but they're not as engaging as Robert's review. Besides, there's no reason to read the critics on this one - either you want to see a surrealistic, dark, unique animated film or you don't.
Posted by cj at January 13, 2007 11:45 AM