A Monster in Paris 3D (U)

Alison Rowat's Review

Bibo Bergeron’s animated concoction gives a beret-clad nod to everything from The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame to the early works of Georges Melies. All of which four-year-olds will lap up. Or maybe not.

What they will like, and what will pass a winter afternoon pleasantly, is the simple story of good eggs versus bad as an experiment goes wrong in the flooded Paris of 1910, giving rise to the creature of the title.

And what a bizarre creation he is. On a night terrors, heebe-jebee scale, he’s probably up there with blancmange. Still, the animation of turn of the century Paris is lovely, all pastels and squiggles and carriages, and the songs, some performed by Vanessa “Joe Le Taxi” Paradis, are nice and easy on the lugs.

Paul Greenwood's Review

This charmless French animation, redubbed with an English-speaking cast, is set in Paris in the early 20th century, where Emile is a timid projectionist in love with his assistant.

There are then any number of sloppy diversions and false starts before we get to the actual story, which kicks off when Emile and his pal arrive at a laboratory and an accident with some potions creates a giant, seven-foot tall flea.

But he isn’t the monster most perceive him as, and is in fact a gentle soul with a beautiful singing voice, though that doesn’t stop the ambitious commissioner who is desperate to kill him and become a hero.

There’s a touch of Phantom of the Opera and a hint of Hunchback of Notre Dame here, wrapped up in tepid, unimaginative chase scenes and bursting at the seams with side-plots and unnecessary characters, making for an absence of laughs amid a jumble of unfocussed ideas, and low key to the point of cheap and crummy.