The Triplets of Belleville

Maybe everyone's right about the French. This movie was a critical darling when it played in the theaters. Now that I've seen it, I'm not so impressed. There are some charming and entertaining moments here, but there's also weirdness and something strangely opaque in the presentation of the story. The decision to tell the tale mostly through actions and music--not through dialogue, which would have needed subtitles--comes across as a bad move for this viewer; the characters seem to have little definition without any explicit motivations. That sounds like I want the film dumbed down; I don't. I just feel that, in this case, the director did not give his flatly drawn characters enough depth.