Sunday, February 10, 2008

Triplets of Belleville

Lots has happened since my last post, but writing a paragraph about a movie is way easier than writing about everything that has happened.



My mom brought home the DVD of Triplets of Belleville, a French animated flick from 2003. Imagine the French doing Spirited Away, and you've got a pretty accurate picture of this movie. It's about a Tour de France competitor and his grandma, who live a one-track life of bicycle training until the young man gets kidnapped by some mafiosos for silly, nefarious purposes.

The whole thing is visually weird, surreal, full of caricatures. The French characters have absurd French noses. When the action moves to America, the Americans are absurdly fat and constantly overeating. Such caricatures, no doubt, are part of the reason critics, sadly, have praised this movie so much. Ah, the French, they can poke fun at their own noses, and also at American gluttony. For me, it was over the top.

Spirited Away was visually splendid and imaginative, with an equally engaging story. This flick didn't have much of a story, and the visuals were highly exaggerated but otherwise not very creative. Maybe I just despise French things, who knows.