Madame Souza and her grandson used to watch the singing Triplets of Belleville on TV. She raises her orphaned grandson by herself and encourages him to be a great cyclist. He enters the Tour de France. He and others are kidnapped and shipped to a criminal boss who runs his own tour with stationary bikes. Souza and their overweight dog Bruno follow the ship to Belleville where they are befriended by the eccentric frog-eating Triplets of Belleville. While performing with the Triplets at a nightclub, Bruno sniffs out his owner's scent on the mob boss.I love the unique ugly style that is done so beautifully. It's wonderfully weird and surreal. I don't think the story moves fast enough. There is a lack of urgency at times. There is more than one dream sequence for the dog. This is an unique vision but the slower scenes get a bit repetitive. The lack of dialog is another part of that uniqueness.

Belleville Rendezvous is the debut feature film from French animator Sylvain Chomet. Like its equally impressive follow-up, The Illusionist, it's a highly original and beautiful piece of work. Its story tells of a boy and his grandmother Madame Souza who live in the French countryside. One day she buys him a bicycle and it becomes his obsession. Fast forward a few years and he is competing in the Tour de France but is kidnapped by mysterious Mafia types and taken to the city of Belleville to be used as part of an elaborate gambling scheme. Madame Souza and Champion's faithful dog Bruno set off to rescue him.There are two things that make this film an absolute delight – its wonderfully inventive and quite beautiful artwork and its extremely effective sense of humour. The animation is consistently wonderful and the backdrops gorgeous. It feels so very French and incredibly authentic; it has a real organic feeling to it. The characters which populate this world are brilliantly rendered too. The relationship between Madame Souza and her grandson Champion is genuinely heart-warming, while both generate many laughs – especially funny to me was Madame Souza blowing her whistle at the mechanic who fixes her vehicle in order for him to up his pace. But funniest of all is Bruno, who has to be the all-time best animated dog ever; what makes him so good is that despite being a cartoon, he actually behaves hilariously realistically dog-like throughout. We follow his daily routines and, again, he is entirely believable and lovable. Once we arrive in the big city we encounter The Triplettes of Belleville and the gangsters; the former are an unforgettable trio of eccentric tall old ladies who in one highlight perform a musical routine purely using household items, while the gangsters are very original too, with the box-like heavies and rodent-faced engineer being particularly good. Even peripheral characters are greatly amusing, such as the fawning waiter who literally bends over backwards for his customers! The humour throughout, is inspired and the world created a fantastically original one.I think you would be hard pressed to find another animated film that combines visual invention, artistic beauty, musical innovation and laugh-out-loud humour as effectively as Belleville Rendezvous. It's a real joy.

In recent years there has been a boom (mostly thanks to globalization) in the release of foreign animated films outside the common market (i.e. Disney, Dreamworks, Japanese anime), mainly European emerging as alternatives for those seeking animation not made for kids. Within this wave comes the french movie The Triplets of Belleville, one of the most original animated films ever made (in the opinion of this writer, of course).Directed by Sylvain Chomet tells the story of Madame Souza who is in charge of raising her grandson Champion after being orphaned. In search of something that makes him happy, she discovers that Champion's true vocation is cycling and after years of hard training is ready to compete in the famous Tour de France. But in the middle of the competition he is kidnapped by a mafia that uses cyclists for clandestine races and they're killed if they lose. Thus, Madame Souza begins the rescue of her grandson in the bizarre town of Belleville with the help of the triplets of Belleville, famous stars of music hall in the 20's.This is how Chomet creates an amazing story full of absurdities and nonsensical situations that works wonderfully and without the need of dialogues, creates absolute empathy to characters that appear to be designed to cause annoyance. A very curious element is Chomet's decision to portray Belleville (an obvious reference to New York) as a city full of morbidly obese people. Although this is meant as a critique of Western society where consumption makes people apathetic and uninterested in themselves.Moreover, the music plays an important role in this film, without being a musical in the strict sense of the word has incredibly vivid and infectious musical moments, like the opening scene, which recalls the glory years of the triplets and in the making small appearances of legends like Django Reinhardt, Josephine Baker and Fred Astaire, in addition the soundtrack composed by Benoit Charest adds a feeling of nostalgia.In short, The Triplets of Belleville is the perfect example of an animated film that breaks all established and refreshes the genre in an unexpected way.

Hate is a strong word yet it applies here as I did hate this film. It was rather boring and just pointless. Anyone who says the animation was top notch and better than most Disney or Pixar stuff is on something. The first part of the movie is done in B&W which looks like something out of a 1940's Merry Melodies cartoon, the rest of the movie is done in color and looks a lot like the animation from the Beatles animated movie "Yellow Submarine" with scenery and characters all drawn in weird surreal type images. I found this type of animation to be out of place and really ugly ,not in a bizarre way, just in a cheap way.My other reasons for hating it are virtually no dialog which to some consider that an art form ,sure if you watch an old silent movie but not for a modern work, The characters are all portrayed in caricature or parody too. Americans are all drawn to be obese , Europeans are thin, guys who ride bikes have freakishly large leg muscles etc. I mean can we say contrived here.The Triplets start off as 3 young women singing in the 1920's or 30's , later in the movie they are shown in the present time as 3 old hags who eat frogs and cackle. Their involvement in this really long and drawn out plot of a Tour De France biker getting kidnapped is purely by coincidence. The grandmother blows a whistle incessantly throughout the movie and the Triplets try to sing ,rather badly of course. It's just a train wreck of a movie. Definitely not for kids or for that matter for anyone with decent taste. I'm sorry but I did not find it to be this masterpiece of an art form. If anything it comes across as one long boring bland waste of time and film. Paying 8 dollars for this is a tragedy.