I had never heard of this film, but yesterday it popped up on my netflix recommended and I saw the art style and thought ‘hey this looks quite artsy for a cartoon’ and also, more importantly ‘I bet Olly* hasn’t seen this, if I watch it I can say shit like ‘well… I don’t wanna give you any spoilers but..’ so I thought I’d stick it on. The artist clearly loves baboons, benedict cumberbatch… and also maybe antelopes? All the characters that are supposed to be hot look like this motherfucker (figure 1 below)
This movie has a lot of dream sequences, the first scene is this mental train dream where the main dude (Ruben Brandt, the collector) is sitting on a train and there’s some kid and a snail and then he sticks his arm out the windom and a psycho little girl bites his arm, so I’m already sitting there like (??? what the fuck, is this all going to be metaphors? I was ready to dip) but then oh he wakes up and IT WAS ALL A DREAM [foreshadowing for the bullshit ending probably- I’m already mad].
Then we meet the main girl, Mimi, who is like an art thief but also a stunt woman and a gymnast. She steals a fan from (i think) the Louvre? Its in France anyway. Shes like backflipping through windows, and then this random dude, didn’t catch his name but he looks like Vladimir Putin rocking a very bold overlined lip, he starts chasing her (think he’s supposed to be a cop? [i checked- his name is detective Kowalski-like that penguin from Madagascar]) and they end up on a boat and she gets away by throwing the fan in the water being like ‘which beautee do you wont teu luck up, mon cherie’ and she bounces.
Next scene she’s in a hot air balloon (why not) and she rings up Ruben Brandt and is like ‘I got a problem 😦 cant stop knicking’ and hes all like ‘np come over’ cuz hes doing baddy rehabilitation over at his, apparently he was in Italy? But hes got this sick office with fish tank floors and walls and im jealous- he must be charging a serious hourly rate it- the man’s only got 3 patients
So then we see a cut away to the news being like ‘oooh someone stole a fan and then they got it back’. All I have to say is what the fuck, why the news anchor gotta look like that.
Then we see more of Vladimir Putin, and he’s literally got a knife collection and they all have names, which i can literally only assume he came up with- what a total red flag. Imagine going over someone’s house and all they have in their house is a huge glass case of knives, some hats, and this clapped-ass hamster. You’d leg it out of there, you just would.
So then we’re back at Rubens, and we meet these other 3 dudes, one of them is 2d and has 2 faces (i really like the way they did that, just think its a fun little detail) and he’s there cuz hes getting chubby and can’t fit under doors anymore! And so then Mimi comes along and starts painting pictures of whats ‘missing in her heart’ because apparently that’ll sort her right out.
So now we get to know a bit more about Ruben, apparently he’s getting these gnarly nightmares with characters in famous paintings attacking him, and he records a little soundbite on his tape recorder everytime. We get a few more wacky dream sequences, a classic one with botachelli’s venus (i’m learning!) where the animation goes *a bit* like the numberjacks when the problem blob rocks up…
So obvs, kleptomaniac Mimi knicks it and listens to it and somehow she just goes ‘bet if i stole the painting he’d be cool and it wouldn’t freak him out anymore’, (or maybe shes just pranking him for a tiktok idk) so she just does and she’s like ‘oop surprise’ here you go! That thing that you’re really scared of and hes all like ‘im cured :)’ so now the project is all these baddies have to go steal all the paintings in Ruben’s dreams. They took literally no convincing they were just like ‘a heist, why not not much going on here’.
So then they do that for a bit, and this Vladamir Putin guy is following them and trying to figure it out because there’s a fat reward on their heads, so then – MAD PLOT TWIST **TW- he finds out he’s actually Ruben’s half brother and also that their dad was like this mad german brainwashey scientist, and he’d been showing Ruben these freaky subliminal messaging cartoons for like hours every day throughout his childhood, and they all had the art from his nightmares in for like one frame out of 25 in an attempt to make him a ‘great artist’…
and then right after that bombshell this Gru from the minions movie looking-ass motherfucker rocks up in his house being like ‘mwahahah thats for ze information’ and then attacks him cuz he wants the reward. Can this guy catch a damn breath but yeah sorry the knife collection put me right off this guy i was kind of rooting for Gru (despite him already murdering someone) at that point. But yeah, Mike Walsowski wins.
Then we get the climax, where the collectors pretend to be a performance art crew and steal the art in front of this applauding crowd, and fight off all these bad guys, while these hipsters in the crowd are like ‘this is such great performance art aha- I get it :)’ . I liked this part a lot, I too, get it 🙂 its like tongue in cheek, but kind of dissing the crowd that would likely watch this… like its a pretty artsy film and I can literally see Olly* watching this being all like ‘see the symbolism, look at that composition of this shot blah blah etc’ but I’m glad they got a little pop at that crowd- freaking nerds.
My only actual BEEF with this movie was the ending. It was all a fucking dream. Are you having a laugh, I’ve just watched this whole movie and you’re really going to be like ‘ha syke’. Wasting my TIME! What a cop out man, wrap your film up properly.
Also, side note, the music in this film SLAPS, every song in it is extremely groovy.
Overall, I really liked this movie, I liked the dream sequence parts, it was a solid piece of work and I enjoyed it, but that ending was such an anticlimax. I just know that i’ve missed literally all the little details in this movie, I’m sure its very clever if you know about art and are already fancy, but that lot need to stop hoarding all the culture! Let us uncultured scum enjoy the film too lowkey?
OK peace I’ll be back next week with another movie, stay groovy xx
*Olly is my boyfriend, he’s one of those film hipsters and im fueled purely on spite so knowing something he doesn’t know about a film absolutely fills my heart with joy
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