Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart, Blu-ray (2014)

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart, Blu-ray (2014)

This is the second animated feature from Luc Besson’s company, and evidently he was very involved in its direction, as he was in the first one,  A Monster in Paris. However, I don’t find it as enjoyable as A Monster in Paris; it seems like a low-budget Tim Burton effort (and in fact there is even a blurb on the front for Burton’s Corpse Bride) and a bit too weird even for me, who usually likes things weird. In a way it seem more that it’s catering to adults than kids, although there’s nothing really violent or awful in the film.

Little Jack is abandoned by his real mother, who has gone to the local midwife in her strange house perched on the edge of a precepiece. Madeline is incapable of having children and when Jack’s mother leaves she takes over rearing Jack (she is also reputed to be the town witch). She sees that due to it being the coldest day of the year Jack has a frozen heart and replaces it with parts from a cuckoo clock. There are three rules he must remember with his special heart: He can never touch its hands, he must never have a temper tantrum, and he cannot fall in love.

Naturally, when he is 11 and allowed out of the house for the first time, he falls madly for Miss Acacia, a young Spanish singer. Besides the possible injury to his heart, Jack has to deal with the story’s villian: a bully named Joe, who doesn’t really seem necessary to the story. After some adventures, including meeting and becoming friends with Monsieur Melies, the early French filmmaker of fantasies (as in Hugo), he is ready to run off with Miss Acacia, when Joe shows up again and reveals to her the three rules of Jack’s cuckoo-clock heart, and she then disses Jack and prepares to run off with Joe. In the end, of course, true love prevails and the couple are in a loving embrace. There are many other fascinating characters in the story, such as the other people in Madeline’s house, her spectacle-wearing black cat who closes windows for her, and the old man for whom she has fashioned a xylophone spine to help his back problems.

The music is a bit of a let-down, unless you’re a fan of bad David Bowie, and I hadn’t expected some of the story would turn into a musical. There’s some cute bits with the Milies character, but he also expounds part of the plot quite a bit, which gets tiresome. The romance of Jack and Aciacia may make all this worthwhile, however. I thought first this was all stop-motion, but soon realized it was mostly animation, perhaps all, because many of the effects couldn’t be done with just stop-motion characters. The dubbing of everything into English is perfectly done. I didn’t even try the original French version.

—John Sunier