| It’s
easy to like a movie for all the wrong reasons. Flashy visuals and
some muted oohs and aahs in the audience can cover up any number
cinematic sins. Did Gladiator win best picture because
it honestly was the greatest film of 2000 or because everyone thought
it must have been a real challenge to make? Should I even mention
Forrest Gump? Animated films often suffer from this trap. People
don’t like to say that the latest non-CG work from Disney
is the crap that it really is, because they know that somewhere,
be it in Hollywood or Hong Kong, someone sat there with a pencil
drawing every frame. Thankfully, not all animation studios have
been pumping out garbage like Lion King 1 1/2. Last year’s
animated picture Oscar winner, Spirited Away, while released
by the Disney-owned Miramax studio, was made in Japan, far away
from the American animation system. The mighty computer animation
studio Pixar, recently dumped by Disney, made what many consider
to be the best film of 2003, Finding Nemo. Pixar’s
latest work has been what Disney’s animated films were like
in their prime: story-driven visual masterpieces that entertain
a 70-year-old just as must as a 3-year-old. The recent announcement
that Disney has shut down its hand-drawn animation division has
left many wondering just what is to come next. While Spirited
Away’s anime may be the saving grace of handmade animation,
leave it to the French to offer up their own bizarre animated nail
in Mickey Mouse’s coffin, The Triplets Of Belleville.
Created by French animator Sylvain Chomet, The Triplets of Belleville
has received a lot of hype (and an Academy Award nomination for
animated feature). But the movie falls into the “easy to like
for the wrong reasons” category. It’s gorgeous, and
everything from the film’s quirky old-timey jazz soundtrack
to its unique character design (everyone is either very short and
fat or very tall and thin) are treats. Finally, however, the film
lacks substance. A few grunts, some jazzy tunes and a few quick
words tell the story. At first intriguing, the technique quickly
grew old. I found I wasn’t connecting with the movie in any
personal way; often I wished someone would say something so I would
have a concept to grab onto.
The film’s plot involves a grandmother setting out to rescue
her grandson, who has been kidnapped while he was racing in the
Tour de France. On her quest, she befriends a singing trio of frog-eating
women known as The Triplets of Belleville, travels across an ocean
and somehow ends up in a roly-poly-car chase complete with blazing
guns and even a rocket launcher. Sounds impressive, I know. The
film continued to build as if something fantastic was about to happen,
yet nothing ever does.
Considering I grasped all that plot without any narrative at all,
I couldn’t help wonder what I was missing. Considering the
city of Belleville’s obese population and love of guns, cars
and money, I began to wonder if this was a parody of American culture—not
being French, was I completely out of the loop? I looked around
the theater to see if others were as lost as I was, yet all I saw
were happy eyes and wide smiles all down the rows.
While The Triplets of Belleville primarily uses hand-drawn
animation, it lets some obvious digital work slide in the picture
for things like water or the type on a newspaper. Maybe the technology
is necessary for animating something that complicated, however,
it looks horribly out of place contrasted with the film’s
rough style. Imagine a little hand-drawn boat traveling against
raging, 3D, CG water, and you get the idea. Much like French director
Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s City of Lost Children or Amelie,
The Triplets of Belleville walks a fine line between dark
satire and warm fuzziness. But while Jeunet’s films succeed
in combining the two, Belleville ends undecided on just what it
wants to be. At one moment we are looking into the dreams of a fat
dog named Bruno and at another we are watching our heroes be shot
at during an out-of-place climatic car chase. As the credits began
to roll, I felt like I saw cinematic eye candy that came in painted-up
pretty wrapping but turned out to be utterly unsatisfying. The Triplets
of Belleville, while made with bold technical skill, is far from
being the saving grace of the decaying world of hand-drawn animation.
If only it had more of those little things like characters and plot,
it might of actually been a good movie. Like a painting bought to
match the couch, The Triplets of Belleville serves its
function as being pretty, but in the end is completely disposable.A2P
The Triplets of Belleville opens at the State Theater on February
27.
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