In each story the imagery dazzles at first, then becomes somewhat dreary; Ocelot's storytelling never quite matches his visual abilities.
Tales of the Night(Les Contes de la nuit)
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
France · 2011
1h 24m
Director Michel Ocelot
Starring Julien Beramis, Marine Griset, Jonathan Kite
Genre Fantasy, Animation
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The film weaves together six exotic fables each unfolding in a unique locale, from Tibet, to medieval Europe, an Aztec kingdom, the African plains, and even the Land of the Dead. In Ocelot’s storytelling, history blends with fairytale as viewers are whisked off to enchanted lands full of dragons, werewolves, captive princesses, sorcerers, and enormous talking bees - and each fable ends with its own ironic twist.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
A delight from start to finish.
New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme
More likely to play well with older children, due to its split-up story line, Ocelot's creation is like nothing else they are likely to see animating the multiplex.
Slant Magazine by Joseph Jon Lanthier
Michel Ocelot's recent cartoons cleverly advance Lotte Reiniger's prototypical stop-motion technique into the digital age.
The film feels naive for an audience that's ready for some harder truths.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The film is intended for family audiences. It is so gentle and whimsical that one wonders if American children, accustomed to the whiz-bang action of most animation, will accept it. Maybe there would be hope for the younger ones - but what will they make of the subtitles?
Tales, which (as the title suggests) is an "Arabian Nights"-style omnibus, has similarly eye-bending backgrounds but a creatively monochromatic foreground that comes to feel like a limitation.
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