City of Lost Children

Everybody knows somebody like this or if they don’t they most likely were this person in their social circle.  You know the type,  they fancied the world beyond whichever podunk town they had been  plopped down into by a choice not of their own, either through birth, employment, romance or just sheer laziness.  You’ll see them at art house cinemas, learning foreign languages so that they may drop a phrase or a word in to conversations with other native English speakers, raving over their latest ethnic food experience, all the while looking down their noses upon the mundane things that surrounded them.  Their eyes always peering across the Atlantic.  One thing these people all have in common, especially is  that they all proclaim their love for Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “City of Lost Children”.  

Thanks to the American Convenience of OnDemand,  I was able to check this movie out over this weekend and with the added insight of a few years of life experiences and growth between viewings and without shelling out my hardly earned cash.  Verdict:  File this under the what was I thinking category,  like that bad hair metal band you listened to in Junior High,  the silly haircut you had in the 90’s or smoking cloves in dark dank nightclubs during your local GothDisco nights.  “City of Lost Children” just doesn’t stand the test of time…. at all and while I didn't love it back in the nineties I did think this movie was a well crafted piece of art.   Yes, the visuals are spectacular, the set design, color schemes, wardrobe and cinematography are all breathtaking and it’s one thing that Jeunet excels at in all of his films, even that Aliens one.  Unfortunately, that’s where the pros end and the bountiful cons begin.  All of the characters are either norms struggling in this dark depressing world they find themselves in or the supporting cast of weirdos both are one dimensional, their weirdness portrayed only through physical characteristics and wardrobe, and both the weirdos and the norms dispositions have no effect whatsoever  on the souls and essence of the characters being portrayed here.  In fact, the most dynamic and best acted character in this movie is a brain that sits in a tank filled with greenish water.  That said, the acting in this film is the equivalent to a high school production of “Hello Dolly” and the action sequences are no better.  They come across as if we were watching the rehearsal of an action sequence and therefore  mostly dull and uninspired.  With so much working against this film that means the story and plot needs to be very compelling and it is here that the movie fails once again.

To quote Wikipedia: “The movie revolves around a plot by the mad scientist Krank (Daniel Emilfork), who kidnaps children to steal their dreams. Among them is the little brother of carnival strongman One (Ron Perlman), who sets out to rescue him with the help of a young, orphaned, thieves' guild member named Miette (Judith Vittet).

There’s a 1985 movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Alyssa Milano called “Commando”  with a similar yet more complex plotline and the acting is equally convincing.  Yet somehow the artsy and pseudo-intellectual kids never took to it like they did “City of Lost Children”.  During my latest viewing I was in danger of dozing off at several points and I blame this mostly on the fact that this movie had nothing to grab a hold of.  The character struggles or even the character themselves were flat, uninspiring and mostly uninteresting. They never seem to care too much about what they’re actually doing and even the little brother who needed rescuing never ceased just being a cute kid on screen and therefore never was there ever a sense that he was in any sort of danger and in need of being rescued, just a cute kid oblivious to the world around him someone to gawk at and say "awwww" to.   This film was just a visual masterpiece, but it’s kind of  how when a woman will overcompensate for their low self-esteem or their lack of personality by wearing clothes that leave their breasts flopping out on display to distract you,  that is basically what ‘City of Lost Children’ Is doing, flaunting it’s visuals due to lack of substance and/or smarts.