La fameuse invasion des ours en Sicile (VOD) – Movie Review
Follow Genre: Animation, Adventure, Family
Director: Lorenzo Mattotti
Distributor: Cinéart
Duration: 82 minutes

La fameuse invasion des ours en Sicile (VOD) – Movie Review

Site Score
7.7
Good: Animations, Music, Original
Bad: No real high and lows
User Score
8.5
(2 votes)
Click to vote
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Rating: 8.5/10 (2 votes cast)

When we first caught a glimpse of La fameuse invasion des ours en Sicile, we loved the visual style of the movie, and it was rare to see a ‘normal’ animated movie in times of Pixar and Dreamworks productions. The French animated movie seemed like an art project that went out of control and ended up becoming a movie as a result. The film, which is about to be released in a VOD format, was delivered to us for our entertainment. Was this solely and art project? Or did it have some entertainment value as a story as well?

The movie starts off with Gedeone, the storyteller, and his assistant, Almerina, walking through thick packs of snow on their way to Sicily. They find a cave to rest for the night, but as it so happens to be, the cave is also inhabited by a very old bear. The startled companionship thinks the bear might eat them, so they offer to tell him a story, which is coincidently about the grand bear invasion of Sicily. The bear listens rather amused to the story of Léonce, the king of bears, whose son, Tonio, gets kidnapped by the humans of Sicily. Léonce doesn’t know what happened to his son but when his faithful underlings tell him Tonio might be in Sicily, he snaps out of his grief. The bears all band together and head for the city. Sadly, they are met with force from the current reigning Grand Duc, who wants to see all the bears dead.

The flow is not what you’d expect from a movie such as this. There is no clear high or low, like in most animated movies, where everything goes well to a certain point, to crumble to pieces, for a happy ending to follow suit. No, in this movie, there’s a constant stress, as the bears tumble in one disaster after another, of course, to be solved accordingly. The movie also fiddles around with death and the afterlife, which is not that common for many animated movies. There’s also some violence to be found, but nothing overly graphic, making sure that children can still watch it. There’s a high focus on action scenes with very colorful backgrounds, which is clearly the movie’s shtick.

Seeing our site is located in Belgium, we only had the Dutch dubbed version at our disposal. We can’t comment on the original cast of this movie, which is most likely a French cast. The Dutch cast, however, did an impressive job bringing this artsy movie to life. The narrators did a proper job to set the right atmosphere for the story, with the characters taking over when needed. We loved how this version was dubbed with care.

As we viewed the VOD version of the movie, we are unaware of the special features that can be found on the DVD release. We’d love to hear some thoughts from the creator, or how the animations came to life in this superbly animated feature. Also the music played a big part in this movie, which had the proper Mediterranean vibe to bring the story to the finish line.

Conclusion

La fameuse invasion des ours en Sicile is a full-fledged high production value animated movie. The movie might not be for the smallest children, as it can get a bit complex at times, it is certainly a great adventure for young and old. The music lifts up what is going on, and the overly detailed drawing adds some excitement to what is going on. We can only recommend this movie if you like old school animated films, that have a certain artsy feeling.

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Rating: 8.5/10 (2 votes cast)
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Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)
La fameuse invasion des ours en Sicile (VOD) - Movie Review, 8.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings
Ibuki


Aspiring ninja.

1 Comment

  1. […] tend to use this format to present their stories and artwork. Last year we took a closer look at La fameuse invasion des ours en Sicile, which proved to have amazing artwork and a fun story. This time we are taking a look at Calamity, […]

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