![]() The dubbing is good, without too many lapses in sync, and the language barriers appear to be crossed easily apart from a couple of instances of plot exposition, especially one late in the film by David Bowie’s villainous Maltazard, who struggles to fit all his dialogue into the available mouth movements. The movie itself only slightly belies its mixed parentage, with several moments where things don’t quite gel and one music score sound edit that is perhaps the most noticeable I’ve ever come across in a major production. The title change oddly doesn’t extend to the web, where the movie’s producer EuropaCorp’s English language site still promotes it as Arthur And The Minimoys, which is really as it should be. If you can get past that, it does make some kind of sense, since the Minimoys are such small creatures that they are practically “invisible” to the naked eye, especially adults. The first thing to go was the title, swapping the original English translation Arthur And The Minimoys for Invisibles, which alludes to a whole other kind of feature. Unfortunately the Weinstein Brothers, who seem to be snapping up animation rights left right and center, sensed something unique, picked up Arthur during production and did their usual thing: bringing in celebrity voices, altering the film (trimming it from its French 104 minute run time to a US-friendly 94) and generally sounding as if they were “dumbing it down” for American audiences. That some people were surprised the director of such violent action hits as Nikita and fan favorite Leon: The Professional was moving into animation didn’t both me…we’ve recently seen Mad Max director George Miller liaise with dancing penguins, for instance, and a filmmaker’s best weapon is diversification. When Arthur was announced – as the biggest animated undertaking in French movie history – opinions were split on whether this would be some groundbreaking new direction for animation, or if it would just be the result of another live-action director packing up his cameras for the safer, warmer climes of the computer studio. ![]() I was expecting much the same from Arthur And The Invisibles, even though the estimable talents of French director Luc Besson were involved.īesson is probably best known to wider audiences as the creator of The Fifth Element, the special effects filled Bruce Willis blockbuster, though I have been a fan of his since his earlier French pictures Subway, The Big Blue and La Femme Nikita. The odd styling and completely hopeless story seemed to have been built around some admittedly wonderful background designs, but the movie was a mess, as any animated picture featuring the voice of Freddie Prinze Jr usually is (think Happily N’Ever After and the long in the works but doomed project Delgo). Not so long ago I sat through – actually, make that endured – a “delightful” animated outing named Boo, Zino And The Snurks, or whatever the thing was called.
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