Elsey Rafail
Photography Editor
The movie Monster In Paris breaks the barriers of an indie film with the fact that it presents a monster as a protagonist with the singing ability of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s son, Sean Lennon. This animated film deals with the hardships of being brought onto this world unexpectedly and getting treated as a monster just for looking different.
Taking place in Paris, the audience is introduced to various characters living their day-to-day lives with a movie theater worker trying to get noticed by his crush, Emile, and his extremely silly best friend, Roaul. Roaul is a delivery man for this town and takes the audience on a delivery to a known scientist building.
Accident prone Roaul takes it upon himself to rummage through the scientists’ various bottles despite the objections coming from a monkey, the scientist butler, and his friend Emile. Through a series of events, Roaul manages to make a monster by mixing an enlargement potion onto a singular flea, a flea that was living on the butler, and, unknown to the three, the flea also holds the power of singing.
The characters themselves are likeable, with Emile having a quiet personality and Roaul, at first, being written off as a jerk who thinks of only himself, but both are redeemed eventually in the film as heroes of Paris.
With these types of characters, you are met with a unique plotline that makes the audience question who is the monster? The flea is seen as a monster with its enlarged body, but with no intention to be a monster and only ever wanting to sing, he is approached by Roaul and his friends as they try to find a cure. With a unique character like the flea, the film has a distinct way of being its own thing.
The indie animated film manages to hit home with its underlying messages of not judging others by their cover as its mixed with hit musical numbers throughout. “La Siene Cabaret” and “Un Monstre En Paris” are two hit songs that manage to be catchy and emotional with the beautiful voice of Sean Lennon and Vanessa Paradis.
Despite it being underrated, I find that this film meets all its expectations even with it having a low budget animation as it is paired with eccentric characters, a unique plotline, and some catchy tunes.
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