Review of The Illusionist (2009) by Juanchi G — 27 Feb 2011

It's 1959. An unnamed French illusionist travels from town to town attempting to pull a recalcitrant rabbit out of his hat and various other poorly-executed sleights of hand. He somehow manages to eke out a living until rock and roll comes on the scene. Suddenly, competition from an effeminate Beatles-like band named The Britoons sends his popularity plummeting, making it nearly impossible for him to get a gig.

In search of work, the Illusionist heads to a remote Scottish island where he puts on his show in a very welcoming small-town pub. There, a naive scrub girl named Alice of indeterminable age is so convinced that he's performing actual magic that when he leaves town, she sneaks onto the ferry and accompanies him to Edinburgh. The two of them assume a father-daughter relationship and move into an old hotel populated almost exclusively with struggling performers, including a trio of lively acrobats, a penniless ventriloquist, and a suicidal clown.

After initially buying Alice a pair of badly-needed shoes and presenting them to her as if he'd magically conjured them up, the girl feels free to express her every clothing whim and the Illusionist feels compelled to "create" them for her, not having the heart to break it to her that magic isn't real. This puts him in a real financial bind, forcing him to take a series of odd jobs to supplement the earnings from his flagging career.

There are probably fewer than a dozen words spoken in this charmingly-animated movie and most of them are indecipherable. The characters point and gesture and otherwise communicate against a backdrop of French-sounding merry-go-round music. Imagine, if you will, the wordless aging sequence in the beginning of "Up" extended to feature length.

Though the film is filled with light-hearted moments, it becomes decidedly more melancholy as it progresses. This is not a movie to go to to try to cheer yourself up if you're feeling depressed, as you may be tempted to down a bottle of sleeping pills after it ends.

Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy it; I actually liked it very much. It's just a bit darker than your average animated film and certainly more so than I was expecting. And it's definitely not one to bring the kiddies to, not so much because of any "adult" content, but because they'd probably be bored silly by the dearth of talking animals and flatulence jokes. But if you're up for a beautifully-animated, bittersweet tale about a once-proud man growing old and irrelevant, then this is the film for you.

"Happily ever after" gets somewhat tiresome after a while anyway.