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Review

An inventive, totally original animated film, The Triplets of Belleville offers an astonishingly creative stream of consciousness ride from Vaudeville to the French countryside to the mob-infested slums of North America to the dreamlife of dogs. Almost completely wordless, this Academy Award nominee is unlike anything you've ever seen. The story has to do with a bicycle-obsessed orphan and his devoted grandmother, and the series of events that lead both of them to the path of the once-fashionable singing stars of yesteryear, The Triplets of Belleville. The jazzy animation is one-of-a-kind, no Pixar smoothness, here. The humor is charmingly offbeat, and the characters -- especially the grandmother who would cross an ocean to rescue her grandson -- are absolutely irresistible. A triumph of animation, comedy and invention.

 -- David Bleiler