Jun 01, 2012 A movie is a story told in pictures; a cartoon, however digitally torqued and dimensionally expanded, is essentially a bunch of drawings. The images in “A Cat in Paris” are pointedly and delightfully off-kilter and out of proportion. A Cat in Paris is a children's book come to life, but with the surprisingly mature feel of an adult thriller. This has the complex machinations of classic suspense. The cat really isn't the focus of the film at all, but rather a device by which to interweave a myriad of plot threads involving human characters.

Subscribe to TRAILERS: Subscribe to COMING SOON: A Cat in Paris Movie Official Trailer #1 (2012) HD Movie Dino is a pet cat that leads a double life. By day he lives with Zoe, a little mute girl whose mother, Jeanne, is a detective in the Parisian police force. But at night he sneaks out the window to work with Nico--a slinky cat burglar with a big heart, whose fluid movements are poetry in motion--as he evades captors and slips and swishes from rooftop to rooftop across the Paris skyline. The cat's two worlds collide when young Zoe decides to follow Dino on his nocturnal adventures--and falls into the hands of Victor Costa, a blustery gangster planning the theft of a rare statue. Now cat and cat burglar must team up to save Zoe from the bumbling thieves, leading to a thrilling acrobatic finale on top of Notre Dame.

“A Cat in Paris,” recently nominated for the best animated feature Oscar, is a lovely surprise. Best of all, it’s a lovely surprise in 2-D. You do remember 2-D, don’t you? Both a French and an English version are getting theatrical release. I saw the English version, accompanied by the voice work of, among lesser lights,,, and.

Whichever version you end up seeing, the star attraction here is the quietly elegant, occasionally near-abstract visual design, with its links to artists as diverse as,,, Modigliani, and Matisse. These visual references are for the delectation of the cognoscenti, but directors Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol aren’t conducting a tutorial here.

The references function as art history in-jokes and touchstones; but even if you don’t pick up on them (as most children won’t), it doesn’t really matter. It also doesn’t matter if you don’t recognize the vast array of allusions to classic Hollywood film noir movies, or neonoirs like “” or “. Flip Book Template Pdf Programs. ” Either way, this cornucopia works for all ages, all levels of learning.

Traumatized by the loss of her father, Zoe has been mute ever since. By night Dino slips outside through Zoe’s window and makes the rounds with fleet-footed cat burglar Nico (Steve Blum), who adopts the cat as a kind of mascot. When Zoe decides to follow Dino, she falls into the clutches of Victor as he is simultaneously being pursued by Jeanne for her husband’s murder. It takes the combined efforts of Jeanne, Nico, and Dino to wrest the girl free and save the day (and night). If all this sounds unnaturally dark for a PG animated film, I should point out that, except for very young children, there’s nothing in here I expect would scare kids. On a dramatic level, I would take issue with the way the filmmakers overload the story with noirish filigree, but this is only because the nongangster elements are the film’s most successful achievement.