The Triplets of Belleville

This beautiful, brilliantly bizarre, near-silent, Oscar-nominated cartoon from France is a surreal wonder revolving around a back-of-the-pack Tour de France biker who is kidnapped by a midget mafioso's henchmen to be part of a weird criminal carnival attraction. A curiously beguiling concoction from innovative comic book artist/director Sylvain Chomet, the film pays wiggly stylistic homage to Betty Boop and other early cartoons while creating an idiosyncratic and darkly whimsical world all its own in which an ocean-crossing rescue attempt is mounted by the biker's diminutive, gimpy, mustachioed grandmother, with the help of his spindly-legged, overweight childhood dog and a trio of aged vaudeville singers. Chomet's charming, visually cluttered palette of exaggerated bodies and elongated buildings is so imaginative and vividly realized that you could freeze any frame and spend an hour picking through its details, and his story is so unconventional as to be wholly unpredictable--even to a seasoned, cynical movie critic. I apologize for the thesaurus-bomb of 50-cent adjectives, but I'm at a loss for more evocative words. I've never seen anything like it before and can't wait to see it again. Highly recommended. [Note: DVD extras include subtitled technical audio commentary on three select scenes, the 15-minute “making of” featurette “Belleville Rendez-Vous,” the five-minute writer-director featurette “The Cartoon According to Sylvain Chomet,” the music video for “Belleville Rendez-Vous,” and trailers. Bottom line: a small but winsome extras package for one of 2003's most critically acclaimed films.] (R. Blackwelder)