Thanks to Graham Malin of the Cinegasm Podcast, we have our first review of the Oscar nominated animated film, The Illusionist. Check out his short review below and be sure to leave you comments on it after the jump.
Sylvain Chomet wows the audience one again with his latest animated masterpiece, ‘The Illusionist.’ If you’re wanting to compare the film to Chomet’s, “The Triplets of Belleville,” you might come away a bit disappointed. ‘The Illusionist’ is a more sincere and depressing piece of art with a few humorous moments here and there. Although it’s a children’s film, viewers of all ages can’t help but leave the film feeling sorry and sad for the main character Tatischeff and leaves you in a dark place.
The film is about a magician, Tatischeff, who is part of a dying breed of stage performers being pushed aside for Rock’n’Roll bands in 1959 Europe. Tatischeff befriends a housemaid while performing at a pub in Scotland named Alice, who is wowed and amazed by his tricks and ends up being rewarded along the way. Alice ends up following Tatischeff and stays with him while he does everything he can to make ends meat and keep her happy and interested. Besides befriending a few other performers in the hostel like establishment and constantly walking around town wanting everything she sees, Alice really doesn’t do much in the film.
A proper way of summarizing the film is to compare it to the children’s book, “If you give a Mouse a Cookie.” I felt that even with the lack of dialogue the story was still missing something, something to really give it that push it needed to be great. While the animation is outstand and a relief to see hand-drawn animations mixed with digital technology, the story fails in comparison. There is a hidden message within the film and once you are able to process it, the message or should I say the real story presents it’s self. Although the film was nominated for an Oscar, I feel it doesn’t stand a chance against “How to Train your Dragon” much less the heavily favored “Toy Story 3”. Supposedly there is an additional scene at the end of the credits, but I failed to find this out until I had left the theater, so I don’t know if it fills in the missing link the film needed to be complete or not. If you are able to see the film in a theater I would recommend it, but just know, you may come out scratching your head and saying, “Man, now that I have this cookie, I would really like some milk!”
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