Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (PG)
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This 2013 French CGI film is based on a 2007 novel and concept album, La Mécanique du Cśur ("The Mechanics of the Heart"), by the band Dionysos. (The book was written by the band's lead singer, Mathias Malzieu.) I haven't read the book or heard the album, and if I recall correctly, I only became aware of the movie shortly before its October 2014 DVD release in the U.S. when I was working on my website's calendar, looking through Amazon's upcoming DVD releases. (Though I probably later saw it at Walmart. Whatever, it's not important.) It's something that looked and sounded really cool to me, so I immediately added it to my wish list, but didn't get around to buying it until September 2016 (and watching it that November). And I'm very glad I did, because it's rather amazing. I think the animation is gorgeous, and it's got a great story, and the music is quite good. (I would like to hear the original French version someday, but I certainly liked the English version well enough.) But I think what made me love the movie most of all is how surreal and bizarre it is.

It begins in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1874. A very pregnant woman is walking toward a house at the top of a hill, through a snowstorm, on what is supposedly the coldest day ever. The house belongs to a midwife named Madeleine, who delivers the woman's baby. But it turns out that the baby's heart is frozen solid, so Madeleine replaces it with a cuckoo-clock. Later, the baby's mother departs, leaving the baby behind to be raised by Madeleine. The movie then flashes forward to Jack's tenth birthday. Madeleine has never allowed him to leave the house, because of the danger to his heart. So... basically his only friends are an old man named Arthur (whose spine Madeleine had replaced with a xylophone), and two "aunts" named Luna and Anna. Anyway, Madeleine finally agrees to let Jack go out into the city for the first time. But there are three rules he has to follow, to keep his heart safe: Never touch the clock's hands, always control his temper, and never fall in love. (The first rule actually seems to be constantly ignored and not a real problem, but the other two rules are very important, as his heart couldn't bear the strain of too much intense emotion.) Of course, he soon meets a beautiful singer about his age, and he joins her in her song. The two quickly fall in love, but are soon parted. And the girl can't see well at all without her glasses, which she almost never wears.

Later, back at home, he sees one of his "aunts" wearing her old school uniform, and recognizes it as the same thing the girl he met had been wearing. So he begs Madeleine to let him enroll in school, saying that he believes it would be the best way to learn to deal with his heart and follow the second rule, or whatever. On his first day, he asks everyone in the schoolyard if they knew this girl, but no one will talk to him. Finally, a boy named Joe, who had made himself the "king" of the playground, tells Jack about the girl, whose name is Miss Acacia, but says she had moved away. It's also obvious that Joe was in love with her, himself, and because Jack was asking about her, Joe begins bullying him. We see this go on in a brief montage that ends four years later, on Jack's 14th birthday. That day, Joe once again attacks Jack, but Jack's cuckoo bird accidentally pops out of his clock heart, and gouges out Joe's eye. Jack runs home, and his adoptive family help him escape just before the police arrive to get him. He takes a train to search for Miss Acacia, who is in Andalusia, Spain. But I guess before he gets there, he stops in London, and he's chased by Jack the Ripper, quite randomly. That chase ends abruptly when he meets Georges Méličs, a magician who had invented a movie camera, and goes with him to Paris. Or something. (Honestly, the whole train sequence was hard for me to follow, and I don't remember whether Jack ever actually got off the train anywhere before he and Georges arrived in Andalusia.)

Anyway, once they get there, they immediately being exploring a very bizarre carnival called the Extraordinarium. Jack is immediately offered a job by the woman who runs the ghost train. He decides to accept after he finds Miss Acacia also works at the Extraordinarium, as a flamenco singer. The two of them soon become friends, though she doesn't recognize him as the boy she'd met in Edinburgh, four years earlier, and Jack doesn't tell her who he is, for some reason. Though he does hope she'll fall in love with him anew, even without knowing who he was. Meanwhile, Georges makes a film starring himself and some of the people who work at the Extraordinarium, most importantly a set of conjoined twins whom he had begun dating, apparently.

And... well, a bunch of other stuff happens. More complications in Jack's attempted romance with Miss Acacia, and there are all sorts of things in the film that seemed pretty random, never really explained at all. (Like the thorny vines that sometimes grow out of Acacia's body.) Anyway, I don't really want to reveal any more details of the plot, but I will say that while I adored most of the movie, I had very mixed feelings about the ending. Well, that's not quite right. I mean to say, I rather hated what happened at the end, but I did like the way it was visually represented. That's quite in keeping with the whole film; so many things that happen, and particularly people's emotions- mainly love- are displayed in utterly brilliant, surreal, imaginative, extraordinary ways. And before I got to the end, I was considering putting this film on my list of my favorite movies. But... man, that ending... I just can't. Still, it is an amazing film. If you are a fan of animation, and bizarre, Burtonesque movies, and quirky love stories, and fantasy, and... whatnot... then I cannot recommend this film highly enough.