by KEVIN LAFOREST

Champion is a melancholy little boy who lives with his grandmother, Madame Souza. When she discovers his passion for bicycling, she begins training him. Years later Champion is riding in the Tour de France when he's abducted by mysterious men in black. Madame Souza and her morbidly obese pooch Bruno track the kidnappers across the ocean and into Belleville, a New Yorkesque megapolis. There they meet the Triplets, oddball old ladies who eat frogs and perform in nightclubs using household objects as instruments, Stomp style. Together, this ragtag group will take on the powerful French mafia and hopefully rescue Champion from its grip.

Les Triplettes de Belleville, the feature debut of director Sylvain Chomet, is a wonderful animated feature co-produced by France, Belgium and Canada. It opens with a catchy music-hall number performed by the Triplets in their youth, in a sequence that brilliantly emulates the look of the black and white cartoon shorts of Max Fleischer and features cameos by Fred Astaire, Josephine Baker and Django Reinhardt. The remainder of the film is in colour and brilliantly integrates modern 3D effects, while still maintaining an old-fashioned sensibility, like European animated favourites or our own NFB classics.

The story is almost entirely told visually, with only a few inconsequential words here and there. It's all about the images, full of charm and quirks and humour, not unlike the work of Tati or Chaplin. The characters are distinctly stylized, each one a walking caricature. Champion is wire-thin but with huge leg and calf muscles, the Triplets are all wrinkles and big fat noses, Madame Souza is small with no neck and the men in black are the size and shape of an ice box.

This is a truly refreshing and feel-good flick, family-friendly but not too cutesy - an irreverent, rowdy ride with guns, chases and explosions, even though deep down it's sweet and lovely. It's ultimately much silliness about nothing, but why let that ruin the fun? Les Triplettes de Belleville kept me smiling for 80 minutes, and that's no small feat.

Les Triplettes de Belleville opens Friday, Dec. 19

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