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Triplets of Belleville, The
Sony Pictures Classics


7.5

based on 35 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 91 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for images involving sensuality, violence and crude humor

Starring Michèle Caucheteux, Jean-Claude Donda, Michel Robin, and Monica Viegas

The story of a boy, his grandmother, his dog and his dream of winning the Tour de France. When the boy is kidnapped by two mysterious men during the race, the search leads to the megalopolis of Belleville and the renowned Triplets of Belleville, eccentric female music-hall stars from the '30s.

GENRE(S):	Animation \| Comedy \| Foreign
WRITTEN BY:	Sylvain Chomet
DIRECTED BY:	Sylvain Chomet
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: May 4, 2004 Video: May 4, 2004 Theatrical: November 26, 2003
RUNNING TIME:	82 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	France / Belgium / Canada
LANGUAGE(S):	French (with English subtitles)

Original title "Les Triplettes de Belleville"

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Time Richard Corliss

Triplettes is terrific…there's no competition for the fall's most imaginative delight. In that race, Triplettes can already take its victory lap.

100

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Children may enjoy it, aside from the youngest, who might find it too weird for comfort. Its main audience is adults, though. And not just any adults, but those in the mood for venturesome fare that's both surreal and hilarious.

100

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The most joyously cinematic movie I've seen this year. Chomet's astonishing imagination conjures images you could swear you've seen in your dreams.

100

Village Voice J. Hoberman

The year's most ingenious and original animated feature.

100

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Fast, funny, unexpected and uninhibited, The Triplets of Belleville may be animated, but it is also the product of an artistic vision every bit as rigorous as any lofty Cannes prize-winner. Hearing about a film this special isn't enough. It demands to be seen, and it generously rewards those who, like Madame Souza, let nothing stand in their way.

100

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

An insanely delicious animated feature.

100

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Chomet's wacky tale is so crammed full of eye-popping images, it's impossible to forget afterward.

100

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

This divinely eccentric movie feels as if it came straight to the screen from one man’s wild and wantonly free imagination.

100

USA Today Claudia Puig

Both a nostalgic throwback to the silent-picture era and an ultra-modern animated tale, the slyly humorous Triplets of Belleville is artful, engrossing and oddly touching.

100

Boston Globe Ty Burr

All you really need to enjoy "Triplets" is a taste for the weird and the wonderful.

100

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

It is a pure, streamlined delight, the advent of a talent with no exact equal in modern film.

100

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

The movie itself is a nominee for Best Animated Feature, and it's good enough to pull a surprise upset over the beloved Finding Nemo. It's a mad masterpiece.

100

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

With a bit of Tintin and Tati, Charlie Chaplin and Wallace and Gromit echoing in the pacing and comic sensibility, Triplets of Belleville conjures up a world that's totally surprising and sublime.

100

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Breathtakingly inventive story.

100

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

A madcap milestone. Not since Disney's 75-minute Alice In Wonderland (1951) has an animator filled the screen with dazzling flights of random invention that manage to hook up into a swift, brief narrative.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

If ''Finding Nemo'' is an awesome Pixar superpower, The Triplets of Belleville is a charming, idiosyncratic, self-governing duchy with huge tourism potential on the other side of the animated-movie planet.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

May be the oddest movie of the year, by turns sweet and sinister, insouciant and grotesque, invitingly funny and forbiddingly dark. It may also be one of the best, a tour de force of ink-washed, crosshatched mischief and unlikely sublimity.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Chomet's vision is singularly strange and somber, and one of enormous originality and promise.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

An animated extravaganza of Gallic wit and soul that delivers more wild humanity than many of the year's live-action features. In a word: go.

Chicago Reader Ronnie Scheib

Sly, inventively drawn, brilliantly executed cartoon.

Newsweek David Ansen

A tad dark for little kids, this one-of-a-kind movie delivers 80 minutes of idiosyncratic inspiration.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

The film is best treated as a one-of-a-kind wonder: an ingenious contraption that dazzles, teases, attracts, and repels with all the mystery and sublimity of a miniature world.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

To call it weird would be a cowardly evasion. It is creepy, eccentric, eerie, flaky, freaky, funky, grotesque, inscrutable, kinky, kooky, magical, oddball, spooky, uncanny, uncouth and unearthly. Especially uncouth.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Bizarre, indeed.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

It's comic, touching and a visual knockout.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Most of the magic of this unusual movie comes from the freshness, imagination and sweet spirit of its animation, which is blissfully its own thing and does not show the influence of any of the reigning forces in the art form.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Overflowing with madcap visual flair and following a rambling thread of a plot that seems, at times, more the product of free association than an actual script, The Triplets of Belleville is a triumph of animated style over substance.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

A single seeing isn't enough to take in the eccentric marvels of The Triplets of Belleville, an animated feature by Sylvain Chomet that creates a visual language all its own.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Chomet bows to the tradition of conventional animation even as he tests its limits.

Variety Lisa Nesselson

Almost completely dialogue-free but graced with terrific sound design and a swell score.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

The story is bizarre, unique, and thoroughly unpredictable, while its images resemble some kind of bastard offspring of the linear realism of George Grosz and the fantastic foreboding of Edward Gorey.

San Francisco Chronicle C.W. Nevius

Impossible to describe, impossible to forget, The Triplets of Belleville sends audiences tottering out of the theater, dazed and delighted, and wondering what it is they have just experienced.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

A highly satirical work, albeit without the "in your face" style of "South Park."

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

Such is the hazard of the cartoon: as a form, it thrives on elongation and excess, yet, within its vortices and crannies, who knows what moldy prejudice can breed? [1 December 2003, p. 118]

TV Guide Angel Cohn

The manic energy of the lively and outrageous opening sequence sets a tone and pace the film can't maintain.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 91 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Amy C. gave it an8:
Delightfully weird and beautiful. The music is wonderful.

Roz E. gave it a9:
Great! At last, non-Disney animation! I have shown it to my students aged 13-16, and they remember it for years, and can describe its quirks, and distinctive visual style - fabulous! Who could forget the frogs, the musical 'instruments', the ship, the shape of the 'baddies', and those calf muscles! fantastic!

Simon C gave it a0:
This was unwatchably bad. My expectations for a good cartoon were completely and utterly dashed and I was left thinking that either the director or myself have some kind of thought disorder. Perhaps I am missing something but 'The Triplets' was so boring that the time I spent watching it was almost entirely wasted.

Harry gave it a10:
"The Triplets of Belleville" is one of the most charming, original and hilarious experiences I've ever had at a movie theater. It is a tribute to Silent movies but also a caricature of New York, Paris and Montreal. The animation simply tops anything Disney has ever made. How it didn't win best animated film at the Oscars is beyond me. This is one of the greats!

Devon S gave it an8:
The most imaginative animated feature film I have ever seen. Even Disney couldn't have done it any better.

Robert Y. gave it a0:
Shame there isn't such thing as -1000. This is probably the most boring film i have ever see. ( i had to suffer this film in my French lesson) i nearly lost the world to live it is so lame and i thing the only use it has is to torture people. its like this film site gives all the bad films bad marks and the good films bad marks. whatever this website says i want you in most cases to think the opposite.

Mojo P. gave it a9:
I was blitzed high when I watched this so perhaps I was all the more mesmerized, but I loved the dark and strange animation and storyline. It got your mind working; there were so many nooks and cranny's to each scene so much well layered imagery and a rather compelling plot that made everything work together as such a tight cohesive unit. For those who like mainstream culture this is likely not for you, but for something different and truly unique that is well worth watching, pick this one up.

Triplets of Belleville, The Sony Pictures Classics

Triplets of Belleville, The
Sony Pictures Classics