‘Un Monstre à Paris’ emits a whimper rather than a roar
Un Monstre à Paris (English title: A Monster in Paris)
Directed by Bibo Bergeron
Screenplay by Bibo Bergeron and Stéphane Kazandjian
France, 2011
*Sound on Sight attended a press screening for the 3D version of the film under review.
The animated film market must be a very difficult one to navigate through for filmmakers. Animation, by its very nature, provides creative minds with a near limitless canvas to exhaust their ideas, but not everything will hit home with audiences. The latter group can be a fickle bunch, and anything that diverts from what is widely recognized and beloved risks being snubbed, never truly finding a decent viewership. This explains in part why some studios, rather than utilizing animation to expand the limits of visual storytelling, so often to ‘play it safe’, for lack of a better term. Such a strategy is logical to help ensure box office success, but creativity may suffer as result. Who knows what the box office ambitions were for those behind Un Monstre à Paris, but if one thing is certain, they should have tried to be more creative.
