Le tableau

It's a been a while since a film has filled me with wonder. The idea and visual effects created a world that makes you wish you could crawl through your TV. Every aspect of this movie soars: dialogue, character, story, visual, tone, etc. By comparison, the American animated movies seem too safe and predictable.

The visual team did an excellent job of creating a painted world in terms of how it looked and functioned. Some very clever thinking went into deciding what's possible within a canvas. The plot was straight forward, the painted characters fear they have been abandoned, but has enough substance for serious introspection.

The Painting is an excellent film for children and adults. It tackles some more serious themes than most American cartoons: racism, death, and philosophical questions about our purpose and creation. I'll be looking forward to seeing more films by the highly imaginative director Jean- Francois Laguionie.

a beautiful film. not complex script. not extraordinary story. but the memory of colors, the lovely simplicity, the freshness warm flavor of childhood, the emotions who are mixture of old images, adventure spirit, religious lesson and philosophical crumbs is like a kind of music. the result - an useful meeting. seductive, refreshing, delicate, a not ordinary animation who represents more than entertainment, a window to a splendid universe. the sense of well known world, the game of colors, the animation as a kind of delicate invitation to self discover are virtues of a film with not high ambitions but for this reason admirable way to remember the basic fundamental things.

Fantastic visuals, simply riveting with a perfectly executed structure. However, in my opinion it never reached it's full potential because it was held back. The film possessed a wonderful world without really exploring and explaining it in full detail, perhaps the director was not daring enough to go above and beyond in terms of the story line. Once the story was introduced, it struggled to maintain it's structural appeal. Though it contained a sensationally unique and stylistic appeal captivating the general audience. Despite the simple story it is a work bursting with imagination whether it be in art direction or its dazzling picture-hopping set piece.

The Painting (2011)

If you like animated films in general, and like inventive ones in particular, see this. I think it's good on many levels—the story, the style, the feeling. Even the sentimental ending.

But my taste for animation varies wildly. I loved "Monsters, Inc." and hated "Pocahontas." Anime leaves me cold. It isn't enough to dazzle me with animation tricks, nor to play with children's stories in inventive ways on screen.

So this story works with lots of familiar (too familiar) tropes—types of friends, heroes, problems that we know well. The animation (French) is different than both Pixar and Disney styles we know well, and also different than, say Wallace and Gromit (which wasn't American). But it isn't self-sustaining. I mean, it's a little constrained and polite, even when it is taking visual chances. It's all very "nice" all the time, and that goes with the friendly quality of the movie, too.

I sound like a curmudgeon. Not so (I think)! But I tried and tried to get absorbed and just got, well, bored. Sad to say. Judge for yourself. I will say that I think you need to give it a half an hour or so to get into some of the range of the film. But then, if it hasn't hooked you, it probably won't.

Personal Rating: 6.6/10

I'd like to give credit where it's due, the art style in this movie is simply magnificent, with the wonderfully imaginative Jean-François Laguionie at the helm. This film explores many worlds each connected yet stunningly different. It was truly a feast for the eyes.

I want to break down my rating further:

• Style: 10/10, I simply fell in love with the whimsical yet purposeful nature of the artistic style.
• Score: 7.5/10, Repetitious in many instances but overall pleasant to the ears and motivated nicely throughout the movie.
• Story: 5/10, The story is where this movie falls flat for me.

Let's uncover the story a little more.

• The theme was executed well throughout the movie, but it had to beat you over the head with it, it wasn't even 10 minutes in before a character expressed word for word the theme, lazy writing.
• There's a lack of solid motivations behind actions, with the plot only moving forward because of conversations like this: "we should find the painter","Maybe we should, I've been wanting to for a while." That's it, then they just go off on an outer world expedition.
• It was as if we were forcibly being spoon-fed throughout this movie though we could've very easily held the spoon for ourselves.
• There was much dialogue that was repeating what we could see in the frame, show don't tell.

Now the following is a bit of further nitpicking, though it could be because I watched this movie in English and not the original French. Because of this, I'm not subtracting points because of the following:

• Sound, The dialogue most of the time was loud on the right side, echoey on the left. With sound effects and score being perfectly balanced, making the poorly mixed dialogue sound even worse.
• Speaking about dialogue, much of it was on the nose and could have easily been put in a more interesting pleasant way.

Overall this movie is a wonderful journey of artistic expression, visually stimulating, just paired with a cold porridge-like screenplay.