The Triplets of Belleville
Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: November 26, 2003 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
91
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 35 Critic Reviews
Positive:
34
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
Watch Now
Stream On
Buy on
Stream On

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
TimeRichard Corliss
Triplettes is terrific…there's no competition for the fall's most imaginative delight. In that race, Triplettes can already take its victory lap. Read full review
100
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Children may enjoy it, aside from the youngest, who might find it too weird for comfort. Its main audience is adults, though. And not just any adults, but those in the mood for venturesome fare that's both surreal and hilarious. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)Peter Rainer
The most joyously cinematic movie I've seen this year. Chomet's astonishing imagination conjures images you could swear you've seen in your dreams. Read full review
100
Village VoiceJ. Hoberman
The year's most ingenious and original animated feature. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Fast, funny, unexpected and uninhibited, The Triplets of Belleville may be animated, but it is also the product of an artistic vision every bit as rigorous as any lofty Cannes prize-winner. Hearing about a film this special isn't enough. It demands to be seen, and it generously rewards those who, like Madame Souza, let nothing stand in their way. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
An insanely delicious animated feature. Read full review
100
New York PostLou Lumenick
Chomet's wacky tale is so crammed full of eye-popping images, it's impossible to forget afterward. Read full review
100
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
This divinely eccentric movie feels as if it came straight to the screen from one man’s wild and wantonly free imagination. Read full review
100
USA TodayClaudia Puig
Both a nostalgic throwback to the silent-picture era and an ultra-modern animated tale, the slyly humorous Triplets of Belleville is artful, engrossing and oddly touching. Read full review
100
Boston GlobeTy Burr
All you really need to enjoy "Triplets" is a taste for the weird and the wonderful. Read full review
100
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
It is a pure, streamlined delight, the advent of a talent with no exact equal in modern film. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
The movie itself is a nominee for Best Animated Feature, and it's good enough to pull a surprise upset over the beloved Finding Nemo. It's a mad masterpiece. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven Rea
With a bit of Tintin and Tati, Charlie Chaplin and Wallace and Gromit echoing in the pacing and comic sensibility, Triplets of Belleville conjures up a world that's totally surprising and sublime. Read full review
100
Film ThreatRick Kisonak
Breathtakingly inventive story. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
A madcap milestone. Not since Disney's 75-minute Alice In Wonderland (1951) has an animator filled the screen with dazzling flights of random invention that manage to hook up into a swift, brief narrative. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLisa Schwarzbaum
If ''Finding Nemo'' is an awesome Pixar superpower, The Triplets of Belleville is a charming, idiosyncratic, self-governing duchy with huge tourism potential on the other side of the animated-movie planet. Read full review
90
The New York TimesDana Stevens
May be the oddest movie of the year, by turns sweet and sinister, insouciant and grotesque, invitingly funny and forbiddingly dark. It may also be one of the best, a tour de force of ink-washed, crosshatched mischief and unlikely sublimity. Read full review
90
NewsweekDavid Ansen
A tad dark for little kids, this one-of-a-kind movie delivers 80 minutes of idiosyncratic inspiration. Read full review
90
The A.V. ClubNoel Murray
The film is best treated as a one-of-a-kind wonder: an ingenious contraption that dazzles, teases, attracts, and repels with all the mystery and sublimity of a miniature world. Read full review
90
Chicago ReaderRonnie Scheib
Sly, inventively drawn, brilliantly executed cartoon. Read full review
90
Dallas ObserverGregory Weinkauf
An animated extravaganza of Gallic wit and soul that delivers more wild humanity than many of the year's live-action features. In a word: go. Read full review
90
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
Chomet's vision is singularly strange and somber, and one of enormous originality and promise. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
It's comic, touching and a visual knockout. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
To call it weird would be a cowardly evasion. It is creepy, eccentric, eerie, flaky, freaky, funky, grotesque, inscrutable, kinky, kooky, magical, oddball, spooky, uncanny, uncouth and unearthly. Especially uncouth. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick Groen
Bizarre, indeed. Read full review
83
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
Most of the magic of this unusual movie comes from the freshness, imagination and sweet spirit of its animation, which is blissfully its own thing and does not show the influence of any of the reigning forces in the art form. Read full review
80
VarietyLisa Nesselson
Almost completely dialogue-free but graced with terrific sound design and a swell score. Read full review
80
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Chomet bows to the tradition of conventional animation even as he tests its limits. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
A single seeing isn't enough to take in the eccentric marvels of The Triplets of Belleville, an animated feature by Sylvain Chomet that creates a visual language all its own.
80
Washington PostMichael O'Sullivan
Overflowing with madcap visual flair and following a rambling thread of a plot that seems, at times, more the product of free association than an actual script, The Triplets of Belleville is a triumph of animated style over substance. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarjorie Baumgarten
The story is bizarre, unique, and thoroughly unpredictable, while its images resemble some kind of bastard offspring of the linear realism of George Grosz and the fantastic foreboding of Edward Gorey. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
A highly satirical work, albeit without the "in your face" style of "South Park." Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleC.W. Nevius
Impossible to describe, impossible to forget, The Triplets of Belleville sends audiences tottering out of the theater, dazed and delighted, and wondering what it is they have just experienced. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony Lane
Such is the hazard of the cartoon: as a form, it thrives on elongation and excess, yet, within its vortices and crannies, who knows what moldy prejudice can breed? [1 December 2003, p. 118]
60
TV Guide MagazineAngel Cohn
The manic energy of the lively and outrageous opening sequence sets a tone and pace the film can't maintain. Read full review
More From This Movie

91 Critic Reviews

7.7 User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 77 Project Hail Mary
2 75 Send Help
3 73 Hoppers
4 72 The Sheep Detectives
5 68 Crime 101
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL