The Triplets of Belleville<\/a>. It had been getting rave reviews (rottentomatoes.com has it at a phenomenal 95% — just one point lower than Return of the King<\/I>), so my expectations were dizzyingly high. Maybe this, thought I, was going to be the film that made America wake up to the extraordinary possibilities of animated entertainment.<\/p>\nSo, really, how could I not wind up a little disappointed, holding it up to such an impossibly high standard? And it didn’t help that, before going, I’d read a review comparing it to both City of Lost Children<\/I> and Delicatessen<\/I> two of my all-time favorite flicks. Triplets<\/I> is a fine movie to be sure, but it ain’t gonna revolutionize the motion picture industry, alas – and it’s no Delicatessen<\/I>.<\/p>\n
The plot, such as it is, revolves around an old woman whose son is kidnapped while competing in the Tour de France. [Update<\/b>: Sorry, I meant “grandson,” here — this was a typo, not me completely missing a major plot point.] She follows the culprits to the titular Belleville and joins forces with the titular triplets to free her offspring from an underworld that’s as nefarious as it is bizarre.<\/p>\n
Honestly, the story is fairly inconsequential compared to the animation, which is a wonder to behold – for a spell, at least. But clocking in at 80 minutes, Triplets<\/I> actually had fidgeting in my seat for the final 20. Yes, it’s meticulously hand-animated, but I felt like I’d seen all the beauty and grotesquery it had to offer in the first hour. When the realization came that there would be no real plot, I was pretty much ready for the wrap-up.<\/p>\n
Despite all that, I commend it to you(and not just because the more people who go see it, the more money it will gross, and the closer my dream of a adult animation revolution will come to realization). It’s actually quite a wonderful movie if, unlike me, you go in knowing that story is going to be in short supply. I strongly suspect that if I saw it a second time – this time knowing what I was getting into – my estimation of it would skyrocket. It’s not of Spirited Away<\/I> caliber, true – but it’s better than Finding Nemo<\/I> by an order of magnitude, and that’s good enough for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I want animated movies for adults to become viable form of entertainment in America. When I become king, I will simply issue a decree stating that, for every Treasure Planet churns out, they have to match it with a Waking Life or two. But until that time, the only thing I can do to advance […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}