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Triplets of Belleville, The
EMAILPRINTSony Pictures Classics

Universal acclaim
Based on 35 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 104 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Animation | Comedy | Foreign
Written by: Sylvain Chomet
Directed by: Sylvain Chomet
Release Date:
Theatrical: November 26, 2003
DVD: May 4, 2004
Running Time: 82 minutes, Color
Origin: France / Belgium / Canada
Language(s): French (with English subtitles)
Summary
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.
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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...
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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
The year's most ingenious and original animated feature.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Chomet's wacky tale is so crammed full of eye-popping images, it's impossible to forget afterward.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Ella Taylor
This divinely eccentric movie feels as if it came straight to the screen from one mans wild and wantonly free imagination.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
All you really need to enjoy "Triplets" is a taste for the weird and the wonderful.
Read Full Review >Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy
It is a pure, streamlined delight, the advent of a talent with no exact equal in modern film.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
Chomet's vision is singularly strange and somber, and one of enormous originality and promise.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Ronnie Scheib
Sly, inventively drawn, brilliantly executed cartoon.
Read Full Review >Newsweek David Ansen
A tad dark for little kids, this one-of-a-kind movie delivers 80 minutes of idiosyncratic inspiration.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Variety Lisa Nesselson
Almost completely dialogue-free but graced with terrific sound design and a swell score.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
A highly satirical work, albeit without the "in your face" style of "South Park."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.8 (out of 10) based on 104 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.
