Jack et la mécanique du coeur

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart was a French animated film that took its jolly sweet time to come to the UK, even though the English voice cast was British and the French version is unavailable in the UK. It was distracting to see the lip-syncing not matching the dialoguing.

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart was an interesting film that looked like it came from the mind of Tim Burton. It looked fantastic due to its strange look like the accordion train and strange circus. The film was based on a concept album and a novel by Dionysos. And this was a double edge sword because the film did have some strong music but the plot seemed like an excuse to tie together some music videos. An example of this was the Jack the Ripper song which seemed pointless.

Despite the story issues there were still some moments of tragic beauty like the puppet show and the ending. I did find the lyric 'rip your clothes off with my teeth' (sung by a 10-year-old character) and the advice that seduction works best when it looks like you're not trying. Yep, it's a French film.

Sadly Samantha Barks only has two songs in the film. Most of her character's songs kept the French singer, Olivia Ruiz. This is despite Barks being known for singing .

I love this movie. The music. The way the story is told. The characters.

A few nights ago my 5-year-old daughter and I sat down for movie night. We chose this. Of course she asked so many questions the whole way through, but she sat through the whole movie and talked about it for days. We sat down again and watched it the whole way through. She is a lover of music and of course wanted to hear the songs, sadly we could only find on YouTube in English. Anyway, the movie was simply beautiful. Tim Burton is one of my absolute favorite directors and this movie had a similar feel to it. I would definitely recommend this movie, and I have.

I saw this in English. I suspect that a fair amount of nuance of the script, lyrics is lost in translation. Much of the film is incoherent if you think about, even more so than other fantasias. I am still not entirely sure what happened in the end. This largely works in the film's favor because the oddness of the text fits the visually whimsy. This feels very much like an early Burton film and it has same sense otherworldly quality.

The animation is gloriously expressive. They really push the style into some surreal and dream like images. It is a lot more striking then the generic photoreal stuff that you get in a ton of American animation. I might not understood what was happening at all times but I did understand the emotion-a rich melancholy-because the animation and the music let me know.

This was a very good film.

This whimsical animated french film about love is a delightful treat.

Jack is a boy who with a heart condition and mustn't feel any emotion in excess, you see he has a cuckoo clock for a heart. Jack and the Cuckoo Clock Heart is a fanciful tale from creator Mathias Malzieu.

Malzieu's Jack and the Cuckoo Clock Heart is a hopeless love story of a morose young fellow cursed with a faulty cuckoo heart. Not only that, this melancholic boy turned tormented teen falls in love for a girl with rose tendrils as hair who is visually impaired from crying tears of ice. The romance is doomed as his adopted mother Madeline informs him a single kiss could stop his ticking heart.

The poetic narrative twists and turns and Jack's troubles are Shakespearean, full of misguided choices and fallacious offenses. Some would say the adventitious plot is careless and designless but I think that is where the artistry lies.

The animation is dark and Gothic, decidedly Burtonesque with a Henry Selick or Laika quality yet simultaneously original. While CGI, the animation has a unique marionette picturebook characteristic. The characters are fresh and inexplicably bewitchingly fantastic – from a a bespectacled feline with metallic whiskers, a man with a xylophonic spine, to an angelic woman (women?) with wings and two heads. We don't actually know why this 19th century setting is so magical but it is imaginative enough to not care, especially when Jack lands at the carnival.

Unable to find the original French language version with English subtitles I was consigned to viewing the English dubbed version. While adequate I do wish I could have listened to the songs as they were written and the initially cast French actors. The music is lovely and moving and the English lyrics keep up.

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The porcelain characters were convincing; so much so they were able to bring the more cartoon- like Tinkerbell type character in over the top. I thought wait a minute that is animation within an animation. There were a lot of good elements. I liked the carnival scenes. It needed more suspense though. It dragged slightly towards the end I felt. It seemed too young for adults to watch and too old for children; and probably a tad insipid for teenagers.I wasn't sure whom it was aimed at. Some kids would lose interest and some adults would too for different reasons. It was a sincere movie and the animation was different and interesting. But somehow the story was a bit unconvincing even if you suspended your disbelief to enjoy the movie. I mean I bought into the movie to enjoy it but it did not grab me enough with any compelling elements or drag me along enough. It had a lot of good original components and ideas. but it needed more suspense and it did not create enough concern for the characters. But to be fair I kept thinking,"get that key back'. It seemed to sacrifice the overall plot in preference to style. Indeed it was very stylish animation. I don't think it will be a cult film in America because the English accents might be a bit foreign sounding for United States audiences to engage with. Its good but something indefinable seemed to be lacking. Yet it could have just been my own obtuseness. There were many things I liked about it but the story itself did not really take hold of me.