Another of the fascinating animated films. Belonging to the group of films that you see, remember and reminisce about. Not an American product, it belongs to the same group of films as Journey into Fantasia…
I've been puzzling over what to actually write about a movie I saw yesterday? Yes it's animated, yes it's French, yes it's beautiful, yes it's perfect!!! But what else. One thing, this film is just a poetic crazy animated French film, with all the involvement of imagination, critique of all the possibilities of France and America. From French „froggery“ to American fatness.
And what is this movie actually about? Well, it's about an old lady discovering her chubby grandson's fondness for bicycles, and adding a bicycle to the dog she gave him. As the chubby little guy turns into a cyclist and the huffy little guy turns into a big dog, something happens. The boy is no longer chubby, but he's lean as a twig and becomes a real cyclist, with muscles only in the right places. And the dog becomes a big dog that only knows how to bark at a passing train.And what about the grandmother doesn't change.
What next? Our cyclist is stolen by the mobsters, and Grandma's entire community – Grandma and the dog go to rescue him in the unknown land of America, which is full of strangers and fat Americans. And they meet there in America the famous trio of Bellevile, already three withered old women who are strange enough, I shouldn t even tell what they eat. You'll know.
The film is a successful combination of 2D classical animation and 3D computer animation, and everything in it is linked together well enough that it doesn't hurt much to have the two together. I can see how much work it took animators and programmers to put all kinds of animation together.
What can I recommend? Yes go see this film, it is not in many cinemas, I myself saw it in a big cinema in Pardubice, where it was packed with 10 people, but if many people get to know about the film, maybe it will be shown in cinemas for a longer time..Just to point out that this is not a film for small children, it is a film for people who like experiments and are not satisfied with normal (mostly American) film productions...
Original release of this article January 8, 2004 – Kritiky.cz
