UNTIE THE BOAT

056. The City of Lost Children (1995)

I need to train myself to go into films without any expectations whatsoever, so that when it’s all over I won’t feel so let down.  I’m actually really shocked that I didn’t like this movie more than I did, having heard nothing but good things about it.  Maybe starting this blog has made me overly critical but man, I really thought there were too many flaws in this flick.

It has a great pitch.  Frankenstein’s monster (or equivalent) lacks a key characteristic that would otherwise make him human: the ability to dream.  He enlists his fellow freaks & creations to kidnap children and steal their dreams away.  Meanwhile, a man witnesses his ‘little brother’ being taken and leaves the small life he knows to steal him back.  Intimate and beautiful, therein lies a story that could be deeply moving and equally disturbing.  Why the hell isn’t this the movie I watched?

The City of Lost Children can be described in one dreaded word: overcomplicated.  There were too man damn characters that I didn’t care about.  The Cyclopses were a waste of a cool idea.  Why were they there, again?  Couldn’t one of the five (or four?  or six?  I lost track / didn’t care) identical henchmen go out and nab the kids?  Why did it have to be a secret society of zealots who liked to stab their eyes out?  And I’m always going to be the first person to demand to know why there’s a random female character thrown in and here is no exception: the girl was unnecessary and all she was good for was creating an uncomfortable, creepy sexual tension that any of us with siblings can tell you is agonizingly wrong in ten thousand different ways.  The only thing she contributed to the story was an excuse to show the fascinating Siamese sisters, who served as a sort of Fagin character (to the best of my interpretation) and tripped up our intrepid heroes.  They are badass, make no mistake, the keepers of the orphans running around this dank city.

Speaking of the city: fantastic location design.  I’m a massive steampunk fan and love anything copper and mechanical and anachronistic in a gearhead kinda way.  However, when your entire world is populated with the same brownredorange dirt, with minimal interesting lighting (or lighting at all), your eye gets bored and it is easy to lose track of where we are.  Also the whole thing felt very small and stagey, as though it were based on a play with rotating sets that could only be used in so many ways.  It didn’t feel lived-in or real.

The filmmakers of City of Lost Children also took a huge risk by having a cast of such vastly unappealing characters.  I’m not one to criticize people for their on-screen looks (I am, after all, BEHIND the scenes here) but it was either very brave or very stupid to have so many unsympathetic faces on screen.  In animation we learned the difference between unappealing and unattractive, that everything needs appeal but that doesn’t mean it has to be pretty.  It is an extremely sensitive subject, but I feel no remorse in saying that this film, overall, leaned towards the unappealing side of  things; in their content, in their characters, and in their execution.

5.5/10