Time to review another Luc Besson movie (click here, here, here, here, and here for five others of his that I've previously reviewed).
On 3 November 2023, I watched the English-language version of the French computer-animated musical fantasy film Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart.
Directed by Stéphane Berla and Mathias Malzieu, co-produced by Luc Besson, and first released by Europa Corp in 2013, Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart is based upon the 2007 bestselling novel La Mécanique du Cœur, written by Mathias Malzieu, the movie's co-director. He is also lead singer with the famous French rock group Dionysos, who in turn composed its music and songs, releasing them in the form of a highly successful concept album. In addition, Malzieu voiced this movie's principal character, Jack, in the original French version (in the English version, Jack is voiced by Orlando Seale).
This thoroughly enchanting but also very poignant movie tells of a boy named Jack who is born in Edinburgh on the coldest day ever recorded, and whose heart as a result is frozen solid. But thanks to a swift and skilful if decidedly surreal operation performed on him by a clever, childless lady named Madeleine (so clever that others around her consider her to be a witch, and voiced by Barbara Scaff in the English version), Jack's life is saved – by having his heart replaced with a cuckoo-clock!
However, Jack is sternly informed at an early age by Madeleine (who has willingly become his mother after his real one abandoned him following his operation) that he will only continue to survive if he never touches the hands of his cuckoo-clock heart, if he never loses his temper, and if he never falls in love. In other words, this ain't gonna be easy!
Sure enough, when Jack subsequently falls headlong for a pretty but short-sighted young woman, Miss Acacia (Samantha Barks in the English version), whose tears on that same chilling night that he was born had frozen and damaged her eyesight, his troubles soon begin with a vengeance.
The story then takes us with Jack through many adventures, most especially during his eventful sojourn at a truly phantasmagorical carnival, as he loses, finds, loses again, and finally re-finds Miss Acacia – whereupon, at long last, disregarding his life-long instructions from Madeleine, he throws away the winding key to his heart and kisses Miss Acacia.
Based upon what has gone before, the final scene's closing bittersweet event is fully expected, but also extraordinarily unexpected in the exquisite manner in which it is presented – genuinely heartbreaking in both a figurative and a literal sense.
Throughout this movie, its style of animation is an absolute feast for the eyes, especially as it is so fundamentally different from the far more photo-realistic style adopted by so many Hollywood animated films nowadays. Instead, it compares intimately to a glorious, moving work of art – and is all the more memorable and mesmerizing for that.
Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart is truly fantastical in storyline, elegantly melodic musically, and spellbindingly beautiful visually, a surreal expression of touching, captivating whimsy given life and wings – the kind of evocative, compelling animated movie that imho the likes of Disney and co with their rampant, ridiculous wokeism can only dream about creating nowadays, more's the pity. And I speak as a fervent, life-long Disney fan.
If you'd like the cuckoo-clock inside your own heart thoroughly charmed, captured, and captivated by this extraordinarily strange yet totally bewitching movie – after all, where else would you encounter the likes of a bespectacled cat with metallic whiskers, a two-headed lady with wings (voiced, incidentally, by Jessie Buckley), and a man with a xylophone spine? – be sure to click here to watch an official trailer on YouTube for Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart.
Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.
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