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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
"The Triplets of Belleville" is an inspired romp through the warped Gallic mind of Sylvain Chomet. I understand
that he has a day job as an author of comic books. Maybe he ought to switch careers as this movie is a wonderful example of
sheer bravura cartoon insanity for adults. In a word, this film is a riot!
Don't worry about the language barrier, as there is very little language of any kind used in this film. Perhaps 10 words
in French and 10 words in English, and that's about it. There aren't even any subtitles as the movie is largely a visual effort.
And there are so many American influences in this film that one might almost think of it as a joint collaborative effort between
our two countries.
The anchor of this film is the Triplets of Belleville, three singing sisters who start this cartoon off on a melodic note
and finish it by coming to the rescue of a kidnaped cyclist so that justice prevails and a little old grandmother is saved
from a wretched fate.
The beginning of this film is an absolute wonder of creativity that takes place in a music hall sometime around the 1930's.
The Triplets sing their melodic tunes in such a way that these songs will worm their way into your brain so that you will
be humming them for the next two days.
They then take a break and Chomet throws a character into the orchestra pit who looks a lot like Harpo Marx when he and
Groucho were playing baseball in the orchestra pit in their classic movie, "A Night at the Opera."
These antics are followed by a dancer who looks suspiciously like Fred Astaire. He croons and dances and then his shoes
suddenly jump off his feet in a revolt against all the work that they are required to do. They begin to snarl ferociously
from a large mouth that opens up in the toe of each, revealing a frightening array of pearly white chompers. These shoes are
soon attacking the bare footed Astaire and chewing up his legs right on the stage in front of the horrified audience!
After this great show we move from Belleville (loosely modeled after New York City) back to France where a kindly little
grandmother with a club foot is trying to raise her orphaned grandson in the best way that she can. They live in a decidedly
off kilter tower of a home that starts off being located out in the sticks but with the passing years ends up being surrounded
by suburbia with an elevated train running right by their second floor window.
She gives her grandson a foolish looking dog for his pet. Like all dogs everywhere, he springs to life every time a train
passes by on the elevated and he runs to the window and barks like crazy.
One Christmas the grandson opens all his presents and he is not at all pleased that he has not received what he really
wanted, which is a tricycle. Loving him as she does, she soon gives him that tricycle and he obsesses over it to the point
that his life comes to revolve around cycling.
In the country that is the home to the Toure de France, this is considered to be a good thing. Soon he is a champion cyclist
out to set a new record as the Gallic version of our own Lance Armstrong with his leg muscles developed out of all proportion
to the rest of his body. His beloved grandmother and his dog tail(?!) behind him in a truck with her puffing regularly on
her whistle to give him the proper timing and inspiration.
Lurking in the background is another truck filled with square shouldered men in black wearing dark fedoras covering their
faces. They scoop up our hero along with two of his cycling partners and ship them off to Belleville (New York City) in the
hold of a large ship. Once in Belleville, they find out that they are to spend their days cycling on stationary bicycles in
front of a screen showing them the imaginary landscapes that they are passing to the cheers and hoots and whistles coming
from the crowd of bettors seated in the dark gallery around them. It seems that the young men have been captured by members
of a French mob who are tied up in illegal betting rings hiding behind the false facade of a French wine import company.
His doting grandmother and their dog follow in hot pursuit across the Atlantic Ocean in, of all things, a paddle wheel
boat that they have rented for all of one Franc, a small amount only enough for 20 minutes of renting this paddle wheeler.
After numerous tribulations and false leads as to where the grandson is sequestered in Belleville, the grandmother is
reduced to living under a bridge. Finding a rusty wheel filled with wire spokes, she starts to tap on it and the tune emanating
from this activity captures the attention of the now much older Triplet Sisters passing nearby.
They are out for their evening meal in a wild broadside scene that makes great fun of the French for their love of eating
frogs. Too lazy to make any effort to catch them, the girls throw a grenade into the swamp. The resulting explosion has frogs
raining out of the sky into their waiting outstretched nets. The sisters adopt the grandmother and her dog and bring them
home to their sleazy tenement apartment building in a decaying neighborhood of Belleville. Of course, they are elderly ladies
now, but they still love to sing and have a good time. The captured frogs are cooked, but not always killed, and served for
each and every course of every meal - breakfast, lunch and dinner!
The dryness of my description of the plot outline above could never do justice as what I am writing about simply cannot
convey the wonderfully off balance imagination used by Chomet in the creation of this marvelous film. Every scene is funny
for one reason or another, and usually for several reasons all at once. This is really a hoot as a movie and worth going out
of your way to catch it!
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