Yes, yes, it was clever. I did like the animation. Loved the color schemes and the exaggerated use of shapes. I also liked the dog. The “doggie eyebrows” thing was done perfectly. I even liked the sly little Django Reinhardt reference in the first Triplets short.
But every time it dragged down to glacial pace, and I checked my watch to see how much time was left, I kept thinking, “This would have made a beautiful 30 minute feature.” No way there was enough material there to stretch it to 80 minutes.
I’m a big fan of unusual cinema, and I was prepared to go gaga over the film, but it never delivered for me. The story was slow and nebulous, Le Champion was an irritating lump of a character, and the oh-so-heavyhanded American stereotypes (look, the Statue of Liberty os rotund and has a cheeseburger and an ice cream cone! Look, all the citizens of Belleville are enormously fat! Look, it says “Hollyfood!” Look, he has Disney-style mouse ears and a button that says, “sucker!” Oh how clever!) were annoying. I suppose there was an attempt to show the French at the Tour de France as stereotypes, but it didn’t seem as heavy handed to me. But perhaps I was being sensitive.
Plus, there’s no way that many Frenchmen have ever owned guns.
I’ve not seen the movie and don’t intend to because I don’t care for the art style.
“So you’re posting in this thread why?”
Because I’ve heard a song from the movie and I liked THAT. It has a bicycle-chain solo.
I DID like it, but I can certainly see how you didn’t. It was damned slow at times, and occasionally I considered turning it off. But there was enough that was interesting to me to keep going, and by the time it was 3/4 over, I’d gotten invested in it. I wanted to see how it turned out, I wanted to see how the Triplets were going to help, and I wanted to see what weird thing the Triplets or Gramma would do next.
I was also fond of the almost-subtle use of animal sounds for a few of the characters. (Horses for the races, a mouse for the mechanic…there may have been more I missed/can’t remember.)
Putting in my agreement, I just didn’t like it. And I tried. The music was catchy, and some of the animation was really quite creative. But I didn’t care about a single character, and even loathed the rider by the end. Oh, and agreed that some of the anti-American generalities were pretty blatantly offensive, even for somebody who really doesn’t have enough patriotic rah-rah to be offended by much of anything.
Don’t get me wrong. I appreciated a lot of elements in it, but the total result was pretty empty. I probably would have absolutely loved it if they had (realistically) cut it down to an hour or so.
I loathed the movie, and I was so excited to see it after I heard the title song performed at the Oscars. I thought it was going to be some fast-paced, exciting romp filled with likable characters and eye-popping animation, and it was the exact opposite. :o
After seeing the trailer, I expected it to be a lot more fast-paced and have a lot more music in it. The dog was the only character I really liked, though I liked the art enough to sit through the whole thing once.
I would have been annoyed if it was just that, but there were a number of french stereotypes as well. Notice the french people eat stuff that isn’t remotely appitizing? Not to mention the bicycliists with Wine hooked to their veins…
All the characters were abnormal in some way or another.
Because the portrayals of other countries and their people by American animators have always avoided crass stereotyping for an easy laugh. Especially when it comes to the French. Like, for example, an oversexed effeminate skunk!
Hearing people talk about the supposed anti-American slights in this movie… gosh, we can dish it out but we sure can’t take it.
Another “I loved the title song but hated the movie” vote. It was boring, pretentious and just “why the hell tell it in the first place?”. Also liked the Django, Astaire, Josephine and other salutes, but the film should have ended after the first five minutes.
As for the un-American sentiment, I mentioned to my friend Tim after seeing it the rudeness of the American waitress when the old French woman can’t pay for her food— if an American tourist ordered food in a French restaurant but couldn’t pay, would they be kind and understanding?
It’s nice to hear that other people didn’t care for the film either, around here I feel like a minority of one. It sure was gorgeous and I didn’t even mind the pacing; heck, I didn’t even so much mind the anti-Americanism, because we might as well be a villain sometimes in film.
But what bothered me most is the complete lack of empathy for the characters, except maybe the poor dumb dog. The old woman was loyal, for certain, but why? What about that unpleasant, boring, robotic grandson was worth saving? They tossed in a brief backstory at the beginning about the parents but who cares? And the triplets–how unappealing. Why do we care about them anyway?
Pepe Le Pew wasn’t a slap at the French but rather a parody of Charles Boyer, a major star at the time the character premiered. (In Algiers Boyer played a character named Pepe Le Moka, hence the skunk’s name.) Bugs Bunny was a deliberate cry for a Palestinian state, however.
I liked the Triplets. I think many of you are missing the point.
Everything, but everything, in this movie was an exaggeration or a stereotype. The French bicyclists were stereotypes. The gangsters were stereotypes. The car chase was a stereotype of a car chase. The crazy old has-been triplets were stereotypes of the fallen performer.
To select one stereotype - fat, rude Americans - and get angry at that, seems to me to be awfully selective. Ether you appreciate this sort of humour by exaggeration, or you do not - that I could understand, either way. To get upset about one element of it is — limited. Why not be upset with the “racist characature” of Josephine Baker at the beginning? Or the “ethnic slurs” on the French themselves - that they eat gross glop?
As far as I can see, they set out to create characatures of everything they portrayed, and in doing so created a sense of the absurd, the surreal. As I said, this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it is IMHO not worthy to get angry over a portrayal of one group, when all were subject to the same treatment.
