Product Description

An orphaned boy Champion is raised by his grandmother Madame Souza. Her gift of a tricycle starts a craze for cycle-racing that becomes the cornerstone of their life together. After years of relentless training Champion makes it to the Tour de France the toughest cycling event in the world. Alas Champion and a handful of other top competitors are mysteriously kidnapped by a pair of sinister crooks with hangdog expressions. Supported by her faithful sidekick her fat and flatulent dog Bruno Madame Souza sets off to rescue her beloved Champion. An epic adventure leads them across the Atlantic to a vast seaport metropolis named Belleville headquarters of the notorious French mafia. Lost and confused in the threatening darkness of the great city Madame Souza and Bruno encounter the Belleville Triplettes who in their youth were a glamorous close-harmony act. Now these three batty old women are now a bizarre jazz combo. Mme Souza joins the band. At their very first gig she discovers Champion is being held captive by the mafia Godfather himself! All hell breaks loose and the chase is on! Do Mme Souza her dim dog and the Triplettes have what it takes to outsmart the ruthless French mafia and release poor Champion from its clutches?System Requirements:Run Time: 81 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: PG - 13 UPC: 043396032316 Manufacturer No: 03231

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1699 in DVD
• Brand: Sony
• Released on: 2004-05-04
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Animated, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Dubbed in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 81 minutes

Amazon.com
Words cannot capture the delights of The Triplets of Belleville, an astonishing animated movie from the mind of French director Sylvain Chomet. In fact, there are only a few spoken sentences in the entire film; most of the soundtrack is a mix of squeaks, barks, and the jazzy music of Benoit Charest. A bicyclist is kidnapped from the Tour de France by mysterious gangsters; his grandmother travels to the city of Belleville (which has a sardonic version of the Statue of Liberty in its harbor), where she tracks him down with the help of a musical trio gone to seed, the Belleville Triplets. This hand-drawn movie is unlike anything you'll see from Disney; every scene mixes the silent comedy of Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton--in which the world of objects subtly fights with living beings for mastery--and the bouncy hop of Betty Boop. Unique and mesmerizing. --Bret Fetzer

From The New Yorker
A boy is given a bicycle. He grows up to compete, under the tutelage of his ferocious grandmother, in the Tour de France, only to be kidnapped and smuggled overseas. The old lady, with a panting hound in tow, tracks and retrieves the unfortunate cyclist, aided by three crones who feast on a casserole of murdered frogs. Such is the gritty, fantastic plot of Sylvain Chomet's animated film, which could only have emerged from a culture in which the worship of comic books approaches the status of an organized religion. Indeed, there is much to revere in Chomet's swollen caricatures and vertiginous angles, although agnostics may be tempted to point out that a little elastic surrealism goes a long way, and that to learn the exact details of somebody else's dreams-which is what this movie feels like-can be at once haunting and tiresome. In French, just about, though most of it is noise, and no subtitles are required. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Weird and an absolute joy!
I loved it! Not a word of dialogue (of any note) in it, weird, innovative and an absolute joy! I stumbled across it in our local library and took a chance on it. It is now part of our collection. Clearly life is worth a risk or two :-)

There is a foot-tappping melody in there that had us humming for days afterwards, like a secret joke or "ren-dez-voooos".

I would advise the original French version for authenticity and effect. Enjoy!

lol... France.
I caught this movie on an premium channel (Showtime, HBO, Stars, whatever) and I was confused the entire time. I had the same feeling when I was forced to watch Run Lola Run.

If you like obtuse French art-house animation, then I guess you'd like this movie. If you like things that make sense and are slightly less French, then I would not recommend it. It was just too purposely art-sy for my taste. You can achieve the same effect by choosing a random traditional animation off of AtomFilms, adjusting your color settings until your monitor looks like an old sepia-washed post Victorian portrait, with musette/Cajun music in the background while sniffing markers.

Though two years of art school helps too.

Excellent Movie, Bad DVD
I got this item from Amazon, their info says the aspect ratio is 1.78:1 (widescreen) and the DVD case says so as well but when I pop in the DVD it informs me that the film has been formatted to fit my (a 4:3) screen. Which means the sides are cut off, you're missing part of the film. I don't know if this was a fluke or if they packaged it that way (DVD companies have done stupid things in the past) but I passed the refund date on my purchase before I watched so make sure to put in the disk and check the aspect ratio if that matters to you before watching it. That said, it's a fantastic film, gets a lot of story across with only 2 lines of dialogue, and just amazing visuals and sound design. Again, wonderful film, bad DVD.