Director: Bibo Bergeron
Starring: Danny Huston, Adam Goldberg, Jay Harrington, Madeline Zima, Vanessa Paradis
Running Time: 80 minutes
Certificate: U
Extras: Gallery, Charles’ Challenge, Meet The Characters
Paris, New York and London must be the three unluckiest cities in the world; in movie after movie these places are subjected to Alien invasions, criminal activity and any number of apocalyptic scenarios. Out on Blu-ray and DVD now, you can pick up a copy of A MONSTER IN PARIS which is, as the title suggests, a monster movie set in the city of Paris only with a twist it’s an animated film aimed at the whole family. With an all too familiar set-up – bumbling pair of nice guys who both seek to impress different ladies, accidentally mix a number of potions and create a Monster – there would appear to be little original on show here, but who knows?
Set in 1910 the bumbling nice guys in question are Emile (Harrington) and Raoul (Adam Goldberg)- a projectionist and delivery driver respectively, who during a delivery enter a scientist laboratory and magic up said monster. From here we have all the essential plot points a bad guy (Danny Huston’s Prefet Maynott) a beautiful lady (Lucille – Vanessa Paradis) and a love interest who Emile is infatuated with (Madeline Zima as Maud) only with a slight twist thrown in, you see the monster he’s not bad at all.
With such a huge number of animated films out there and the saturation of the monster market it is with some surprise A MONSTER IN PARIS is able to conjure such imagination and joy, it tries to do nothing different, past the good monster bit, but it just does everything very well; the script, translated for us into English, is note perfect with enough humour and visual gags to please and the animation is nothing short of brilliant – which it should be in this day and age. The real star here though is Huston, his over-the-top portrayal of Maynott is fantastic, he takes the script and adds so much with his maniacal ranting and tremendous laugh.
A MONSTER IN PARIS is admittedly not up to the standard of the TOY STORY films (1997-2011) but it’s not far off, it is entertainment with a massive heart and I recommend it highly; it’s one problem may be in finding an audience with children, but I’m 28 and there are enough animated films for those little blighters, it’s our bloody turn!
Extras: Very disappointing but understandable given the French production nothing of any note whatsoever here.
A MONSTER IN PARIS is available on 3D Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD now.
Lisa
Jun 4, 2012 at 3:18 pm
Any word if this is region A playable?
Sam Carey
Jun 6, 2012 at 11:37 am
The review copy we’ve had was not compatible with region A and looking at the press release it seems to be only region B playable. Sorry Lisa but hope you can grab a copy because it’s worth your money.
Lisa
Jun 9, 2012 at 3:25 am
That’s too bad that it’s Region B locked 🙁 Major bummer for us stateside. Thank you so much for answering though! Maybe one day a region A playable copy will be released.