The City Of Lost Children - Dubbed Version

Most helpful review The City Of Lost Children - Dubbed Version

• A Truly Superb Example Of The Surreal

   

  By Mark Adams from Manchester, England , 07 Jan 2005

  [Highly rated reviewer]

  Now this is my kind of film! Twisted, freaky, surreal as a turkey dancing the bolero, and wonderfully macabre. The City of Lost Children really is a wonderful film. The City of Lost Children is one of those preciously rare films where for the first fifteen minutes, you?re sat there going ?What the hell?!?. But unlike those films, with The City of Lost Children, you?re sat there going ?What the hell?!? for the whole film. I do surreal, I really, really do? but this film takes it to another level! This film aint for the kinda person who finds the plot of A Nightmare on Elm Street taxing. That kind of person, in their tragically dull and ignorant way, would most definitely not understand and would simply say this film is ?rubbish?. I pity them.
  
  The characters range from evil Siamese twin women to a brain in a jar to five inept clones who argue about who was the first to a nutter with a hypnotic accordion to a nymphet who makes Natalie Portman in Leon look normal to an evil midget woman devoted to a messed up old man who is dying because he can?t dream. With the main character being the big bad from Blade II as a mentally challenged Circus strongman who?s little brother is stolen by the messed up old man who is dying because he can?t dream. Care Bears the Movie, this aint.
  
  The music is haunting, freaky, and downright spine tingling, especially that scary, scary accordion. Ugh! Sends shivers down my spine thinking about it. Now *that* is the testament of a good score for a movie.
  
  Darkly directed, set in a fantastical world, with a genius casting supervisor coupled with Jean-Paul Gaultier as the costume designer: you have a very, very stylised and distinctive ?look? to this film. And that look is freaky.
  
  Normally, I really hate dubbed foreign films. There is so much stuff out there that has lousy, 99% of the time unemployed, talentless ?actors? doing voiceover after voiceover that doesn?t fit the lip synch. However, this the one film where the dubbing ADDS to the film! Yes, I personally feel that it adds. Because the film is so wonderfully surreal, the dubbing serves to exaggerate and emphasise this! Whether it was meant to, I don?t know, but for me, for one time only: dubbing rocks!
  
  So to wrap up, did I mention this film is freaky? This is a film for the intelligent, the slightly twisted, and the kinda person that likes their humour dark and their plotlines a little different. That?s me. If that?s you too, watch it; if it aint, you?ll hate this film and simply won?t get it.

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