Sony Pictures Classics
Directed by Sylvain Chomet
My rating: 2 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Blu-ray/DVD, Sony)
(Starz)
I'm not a very big fan of Jacques Tati, his style of comedy relies heavily on sight gags and doesn't often translate well from the French. This animated feature film based on a Tati screenplay nails his mannerisms, to such an extent that my criticisms of the real Tati also apply here. It's a mostly silent film, just fragments of French, Scottish and English, relying on body language to tell its story of an aging magician and the Scottish girl he adopts. They travel from city to city, eventually settling in for an extended stay in a shabby London hotel. The girl becomes entranced by the clothes in shop windows, and Tati can't resist buying them for her, despite the fact he can't afford it. She gladly accepts the gifts, while he works nights at a garage to pay for them. She seems ungrateful and I just could not sympathize with her character at all. He eventually tires of her as well, and abandons her to a young man she meets on the street. They part, he hangs up his wand and the film ends, leaving us to wonder why we took this journey in the first place.
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