P R O D U C T I O N   N O T E S

Oh sweet Mary, Jesus, and Joseph.

Which is exactly what the Bishop of Digne would say, if he were exposed to this 8 frame per second travesty.

One would think—nay, assume—that the French would instinctively know how to get this right. I mean, it’s their national story, they all pretty much know it by heart. How is it possible, on any level, to botch a 95 minute animation this badly? Leave aside the pedestrian animation style, midway between Filmation and Rankin Bass (and despite which Rankin Bass, despite their odd design ideas, can do great animated features, c.f. The Last Unicorn). The credits claim they farmed this out to a Korean animation studio, but frankly, it must have been North Korea. And oh hey, do I see the words Pyong Yang there? Indeed I do. Okay, that explains that. Move on...

There are parts of this that, if you don’t approach it with a grain of salt and a bottle of Excedrin, will make you claw your own eyes out and stick chopsticks through your eardrums. For example, the music. The theme song, written by one of the writers, is played almost continuously through the entire work. You will get tired of it after fifteen minutes and then have to suffer through the idea that there’s still 80 minutes more of it to go. It’s so damn annoying that the brief times they break out into the Marseilles or Gavroche’s friggin’ Voltaire song will feel like Yo Yo Ma playing a few bars of Bach in comparison.

The character voices themselves are reasonable and make sense enough to the characters, there’s no one jarringly out of place. However, I cannot believe that not one of these actors looked at this script and not say, "there is no way I am lending my voice to this massacre." I mean, are voice actors in France really that desperate for work they’d sell their own virtual front teeth for this gig? Shame on all of you.

But the final blame lies with the writers, and even with four writers, there’s plenty of blame to sufficiently coat every single inch of them. Because, although only one of the writers is female, this thing has Mary Sue written into every single microfiber of its screenplay, and for Mary Sue read: Cosette. How else do you explain the following:

• Whatever Cosette wants, Cosette gets. No matter what Cosette does, whether it’s lying to Valjean, skipping out on her piano lessons to secretly become an actress to running into the middle of a battle to join Marius at the barricade, everything she does is absolutely wonderful. No one with the exception of the Thénardiers has so much as a cross word to say to her, except for Valjean a couple of times, which he immediately regrets. Which leads to:



• Everyone loves Cosette, everyone who even comes into contact with her. Well, except the Thénardiers. Hell, even Javert is only slightly ambivalent towards her, even when she’s chewing him out for arresting Valjean. Okay, let me rephrase that: with the exception of the Thénardiers, anything male, and any woman over 30, thinks Cosette is the top, the Colisseum, the Louvre Museum. Which leads to:



• Nearly every other young girl in the entire production, whether it’s Éponine and Azelma or a random girl at the piano, is drawn absolutely hideous. I mean troll-butt ugly. Not just unattractive, but painfully so. Only Cosette is allowed to be good looking. Which leads to:



• Every other little girl is jealous of her. She goes to a school and she is the smartest girl in class and the girl next to her stabs her in the hand with a pencil while the other girls mope and pout. Which leads to the crux of it all:



• Cosette is the star of the show. Cosette rescues Valjean from the Thénardiers in a botched interpretation of the second Gorbeau House segment. Cosette helps Valjean escape prison after he is arrested following the trial in Arras. Enjolras is injured at the barricade and Cosette comes to tend to him.

This, then, is the classic definition of a Mary Sue. And what’s worse, Mary Sue’s daddy owns an animation production company. God help us all.

As for the other details of the plot:

Oh why bother. Here’s the entire story for you. Don’t say I haven’t warned you.

The Entire Plot. And I use the term in the same way that graveyards have plots.

C A S T   N O T E S

The cast is listed alphabetically without explaining who voiced who, and I’ve never heard of any of them. Refer to the above paragraphs for the reason why I think that no one will ever hear of them again.

Benoit Allemane (no relation to Benny Goodman)

Daniel Beretta (no relation to the character of the same name played by Robert Blake)

Jacques Berthier (no relation to Big Bertha)

Paul Bisciglia (no relation to Leo Buscaglia)

Claudie Chantal (no relation to Claudette Colbert)

Emmanuel Curtil (no relation to Emmanuel Lewis from Webster)

Micheline Dax (no relation to Jadzia Dax from Star Trek DS9)

Sophie Gormezano (no relation to John Leguizamo)

Evelyne Grandjean (no relation to Jean Valjean)

Gerard Hernandez (no relation to Los Bros Hernandez, the creators of Love And Rockets)

Henrie Labussiere (who probably doesn’t wear one. Oh, that’s a bustier. Never mind)

Denis Laustriat (no relation to Dennis Hastert)

Brigitte Le Cordier (no relation to Brigitte Bardot)

Celine Monsarat (no relation to Celine Dion)

Jean Claude Montalban (no relation to Ricardo Montalban)

Michel Muller (no relation to Martin Mulner)

Valerie de Vulpian (no relation to Valerie Bertinelli)

and Bernard Woringer (as the Beaver)

T H E  W O R S T  T H I N G S  A B O U T  T H I S  V E R S I O N

I am unable to list the worst things, since that would be like choosing the yellowest bits of sand on the beach. I mean, the music is equally bad to the animation which combined is almost but not quite equal to the supreme wretchedness of the script. Perhaps in this case the producers were attempting to bring the viewers into the story by making them as miserable as humanly possible? Frankly, they ain’t that talented. In fact the phrase "talented as a thrown brick" comes to mind, but I’m not sure why.

T H E  B E S T  T H I N G ,   S I N G U L A R,  A B O U T  T H I S
  V E R S I O N

Despite everything above, there is actually one good thing about this production. To wit:

The art design of the major characters. Valjean and Javert look exactly as they should, or rather until Valjean decides to shave his beard off and don a pair of Harry Potter glasses. Despite Cosette’s cloying annoyingness, she actually is designed well, as is Marius. The Thénardiers are perfect in their design. The students are another matter, at least the three they bothered naming (Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre), but the designs of those that are not named and have no lines are so good that you can tell, say, Joly and Feuilly, apart just by looking at them.

T H E  S I L V E R  C A N D L E S T I C K  A W A R D S   ( " STICKIES® " )

And the awards go to....

• The Not Even Close To Walt Disney Rip-off Award goes to the dog, Amiral. He’s small, he’s got a bull’s-eye pattern like Petey in the Little Rascals, and he’s even got a little kerchief around his neck, kind of a mutant version of Dodger from the Walt Disney version of Oliver Twist. So, why does this little dog inspire nothing but revulsion? First, he never ages. Second, he is a bigger mouchard than Javert, ratting out Cosette to Valjean. Third, his bark is so human fakey bark it’s embarrassing. What, couldn’t they afford to record a real dog’s bark? Or get a better impressionist? Sheesh. The dog only exists because it’s an animated film and they have to put one in there. Which reminds me a lot of the guy who wrote a song about what Hamlet would look like as a Disney film, which included a verse about how he’d have a pet squirrel...



• The Kim Jong Il Honorary Righteous Peoples Democratic Republic Excellence Award goes to the animation studios responsible for this abattoir of a production, Studio SEK and RPD de Corée, Pyongyang. Yep, for all the world to see, North Korea has proved that while it may not be able to feed its own people and can’t provide electricity to 80% of its population, it can crank out crappy animation just like other Asian nations... well, from fifty years ago...



• The Purple Heart Award to anyone who has suffered through this thing, whether they survived it or not. It is after all permissible to award them posthumously.

W H E R E  T O  F I N D  T H I S  V E R S I O N

Buried deep in a block of concrete eighteen feet to a side under a mountain somewhere in the Pyrenées. If there is a God.