Official Synopsis
A wacky inventor, his camera-crazy best friend and a madcap monkey make a massive mistake when let loose in a mad scientist’s laboratory. With lotions and potions spilling everywhere, the troublesome trio accidentally creates Franc, the product of a reaction between a common flea and one of the scientist’s mystery concoctions. What they fail to realize, however, is that this ‘monster’ is actually a soft-centered soul with an astounding talent for music.
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With the help of an enchanting nightclub singer Lucille, Franc becomes the talk of the town, just as stories of Paris’s newest monster attract the attention of the egotistical police commissioner, hell bent on securing a big prize to help his battle to become mayor. The unwitting scientists and the singer must team up to protect Franc, a monster with more than a musical career to protect!
While the movie has a simplified, jagged storyline that jumps around unevenly, it does feature moments that truly show how good it can be. For example, when Emile and Raoul break into the doctor’s botany room (well, really Raoul), the back and forth dialogue between the two is absolutely brilliant. You get some great verbal and physical comedy that makes the movie interesting and engaging. I think the comedy, though sometimes subtle, hits its marks when it needs your attention. I like that type of comedy, and it works well for A Monster in Paris. It adds a bit of cuteness and charm.
Speaking of cuteness and charm, you also get some great moments between Lucille and Francoeur, which are less comedic and more emotional. The film knows it has to add some sort of seriousness to the story, which is teetering on a cross between Phantom of the Opera and Beauty and the Beast, so it adds some drama. For example, when Lucille realizes that Francoeur is a monster (overgrown flea), she gets frightened. At that same moment, she hears him sing and is drawn in by his desire to be loved. The scene is very touching, as she realizes he is sensitive and well-versed in the art of singing/music. This sort of moment is scattered through out the film, especially when it comes to Lucille’s relationship and understanding of Francoeur. It helps balance out the comedy moments, but not the story. You get spurts of goodness with scenes like this.
Sadly, the spurts really don’t create a steady flow to the storyline, which brings the movie down a bit. An example of this lack of steadiness is at the beginning of the film. You start the film out with Emile needing to get a new belt for his film projector, which has snapped. On his way, he ends up giving away his infatuation for the theater’s ticket taker, Maud. You firmly establish there is an unmade connection between the two with their dialogue and reaction, but then the story shifts away from it, taking too long to return to it. Emile goes away with Raoul to go get a belt, which ends in the creation of Francoeur. The amount of time spent with Emile doting over Maud isn’t enough to make the connection between them strong, but it certainly isn’t helped by the distance between Emile’s return to the subject. That’s an unbalanced storyline. You have to space it out evenly, have to give proper attention to strong moments that matter (which this apparently did in the film), so that your audience makes a connection. This never happens in A Monster in Paris, which just makes the overall story arc seem a bit messy.
A Monster in Paris isn’t going to outshine the likes of any Pixar film anytime soon, but it will amuse and entertain your kids. My middle daughter (9) absolutely adored the film. She was hooked from the beginning and appreciated the moments it created, more than her grumpy, reviewer of a father. That’s the audience this film is going to speak to, so her reaction speaks volumes for that demographic (she especially loved the musical moments).
In short, if you have kids in the household and you’re tired of showing Toy Story 3 a billion times, this might be a good alternative… especially in 3D.
I’ve seen major motion pictures that had big budgets behind them that couldn’t pull off the 3D effect as well as A Monster in Paris. Granted, animated films kind of cheat with the conversion process, but nonetheless the end result for A Monster in Paris was pretty darn solid. There was well placed depth in some of the purer 3D moments. Heck, the beginning of the film was a foreshadowing to how well the 3D conversion was going to be. You get a theater-goer’s eye view of a old fashion movie being played in Emile’s theater. The spacing between the theater chairs in the foreground is well done in comparison to the theater screen in the background. It’s gorgeous 3D, and it only gets better from that point on. When Emile and Raoul break into the doctor’s lab and you get to the forest/jungle for the first time, it’s visually breathtaking. It looks like a deeply grown jungle/forest and the depth is just absolutely beautiful. I was honestly shocked by how good the Blu-ray 3D turned out to be. It’s certainly not Cirque du Soleil in 3D, but it’s really quite good for an animated kid’s film. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s quite affordable in comparison to other 3D films.
As with the 3D, you get solid HD. Much like the 3D, animated films are tough to ruin in HD, but I’ve seen it done before. There is no grain or artifacts, and no color banding at all. Just really pure, colorful HD transfer that looks sharp. I particularly like the time period flavor that the animators added to this (lots of browns, whites and greens). It looks darn good on Blu-ray.
As for features, sadly there are none.