Nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, this sweet tail, er, tale of a French magician who travels to Scotland with his bunny (who bites!) is good fun, though not quite as wonderful as director/writer/composer Sylvain Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville (Belleville Rendezvous - 2003). Not to be confused with the thriller The Illusionist (2006), which starred Edward Norton and Jessica Biel, this one, like Triplets, has no subtitles and few words, in French, English, and Gaelic. Really, the only word you need to know is lapin (la-PANH) which is French for rabbit.
Jacques Tati (1907-1982) is everywhere in this movie. He wrote the script (Chomet adapted it) in 1956, the magician is named Jacques Tatischeff (which was Tati's real name) and is drawn to look like Tati, and, at one point, the characters walk into a screening of Mon Oncle (1958), Tati's award-winning comedy. Chomet lived in Edinburgh while making this and as much as it's a love letter to Tati, it also honors that city in the 1950s. There are some hilarious British pop stars called the Britoons. Read this to learn more.
The drawings are lovely (people, animals, shops, Paris, northern Scotland (the trip between!), Edinburgh), the music (by Chomet with a few added songs--listen to it song by song here) is divine, and Jack commented that the Foley artist should get an award: all the sounds, from each footstep to the scrape of the pot on the stove and the clunk when it lands on the table, are right there. It was released this week on DVD. Make a night of it, watching this and Triplets of Belleville in two hours and 40 minutes total.
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