Stars: Steve Blum, Marcia Gay Harden, J.B. Blanc, Anjelica Huston
Directors: Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars
Occasionally, the Animated Feature race likes to go for the foreign films, and in the past year, they went for not one but two (the other being Chico & Rita, which will hopefully come to the blog in August), giving Arthur Christmas coal on nomination morning, and for the first time ever, ignoring Pixar (though when the movie is Cars 2, can you really blame them?).The movie opens on a cat attacking a lizard, and a girl storing that lizard in a sardine can, which is never really explained except perhaps to prove that this film is clearly not domestically made (if it were American, the lizard would come back to life and be voiced by Albert Brooks). The girl has stopped speaking after the recent murder of her father by a notorious crime lord (Blanc), and has bonded with her new nanny (Huston) and has become distanced from her mother (Harden), a detective trying to find the man who killed her husband.
The cat, meanwhile, has a double life as a thief's (Blum) assistant, swiping jewels and priceless art all across Paris, making them quite literally...(wait for it)...cat burglars. Groan. Despite this horrible entendre, their capers are actually good solid fun, and involve an hilarious bit with a sleepwalker.
The film, of course, takes many twists and turns, and keeps you bouncing off the edge of your seat as the girl, thief, detective, and crime lord jump on and off the rooftops of Paris, only to find themselves on the top of one of the City of Lights must celebrated landmarks. The pacing is excellent, primarily because it's just over an hour long (making it possibly the shortest film ever nominated in the Animated Feature race). This brevity helps keep things moving (the film is fairly predictable, and though the animation is shiny and plum, the little girl and the Hanna-Barbara gang of buffoon henchmen make "wearing out the welcome" a great risk), however it leaves a large amount of plot holes, particularly what happens to the thief's many exploits and plunder.
The film competed against a rather middling lineup (without a Pixar gem to spruce things up, the Animated Feature race gets a little disheveled), but it cannot compete with Rango, which still remains my favorite of the five nominees. Chico & Rita, which is usually the choice of the critics who don't go with Verbinski's film, may change that, however.
With this, by the way, I have officially seen all but four of 2011's OVP films, and three are at the top of my Netflix list, so stay tuned!
And per usual, here's some food for thought questions-do you prefer international to domestic animated films? Did you find A Cat in Paris superior to the wild west reptiles (or were you more on board with the swashbuckling cat, karate-chopping panda, or the 1940's singer/songwriter?)? And what year would you most like to have completely finished from your Oscar-viewing?
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