So...
I went to see this Sunday morning. The film was at 10:00 a.m. so I got up around 8:15 and got ready to leave in time to meet my friend at the theatre for 9:50. I was rather proud of myself when I made it to the theatre 5 minutes in advance, at 9:45. But then I noticed that the place was totally deserted. Strange, I thought. There should be more people here. As I got closer to the place, I saw that it wasn't even open yet.
That when I finally realized that I was at the wrong cinema - Le Parisien instead of Cinéma Beaubien. I had 15 minutes to get the the right cinema before the film started, so I ran back to the metro station. The other cinema was like 10 stations away on a different line, and there was an 8 minute wait before the next metro. So factoring the time wasted for the transfer (possibly another 10 minutes) and the walk from the metro station to the cinema, there was no way I could make it.
So I ran out and decided to catch a taxi instead. By the time I found one, I had 10 minutes left. I made it to the theatre 3 minutes late and thankfully the film hadn't started. My friend was still waiting outside and had bought the tickets already. It wasn't going to be packed that early in the morning, so we still managed to get decent seats.
*
Anyway, the film was fun (although I'm not sure it was worth the price of the ticket plus the 15$ cab ride to get there). It's a cute story, very much a typical coming-of-age with all the conventions of the genre - nothing groundbreaking or terribly original, but very enjoyable to watch.
The acting wasn't particularly impressive - the kids pretty much had the same look on their face, no matter what emotion they were supposed to be expressing - but given the simplicity of the story, it wasn't too distracting. (Besides, I've seen much worse performances.)
(very mild spoilers ahead... I suggest you read anyway, but if you're the type that doesn't want to know ANYTHING about the plot before seeing a movie, then consider yourself warned.)
There were a few implausible moments in the story that I felt diminished the impact of the film. For example, when one of the boy tames a ferroceous wild horse in one morning - apparently it was as simple as feeding him a carrot - and then has the other boy actually mount and ride the horse through town in order to impress a girl. I kept thinking this light movie was going to turn into a tragedy when the horse would suddenly go wild, throw the boy off its back and stomp him to death, or something. But none of that happened.
In another scene, one of the boys is teachign the other one to swim, and all he has to do is tell him to breathe in and out and suddenly instead of trashing about desperately in the water the boy manages to swim gracefully for 30 meters.
Well, little details that annoyed the perfectionist in me. Overall, the film was still very pleasant to watch, mainly due to the kids charisma (in spite of the at times mediocre acting, they still managed to make me care about the characters) and the grumpy grandfather, whose character was both funny and heartwarming.
I should point out that the print I saw had English subtitles. However, since the target audience is primarily French speaking kids, they had a "narrator" doing a live voice-over for all the dialogue during the film. While this sounds like a total nightmare, it was actually not half as bad as I thought it would be. You get used to it very quickly and all things considered I have to say that I much prefer that option to out-and-out dubbing. At least this way, you can still hear the actors' real voices, and when they are not saying anything terribly important (words like yes, no, hey, etc. are not translated) you get a better sense of their performance. Of course, given the choice, I'd still go for subtitles, but this option would be my second choice, over dubbing which I just despise.
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