Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. —Henry Fielding

12 January 2022

Poupelle of Chimney Town

Yesterday after work I went to a matinee of Poupelle of Chimney Town (映画 えんとつ町のプペル) so that I could see it in Japanese instead of dubbed in English. I never do this during the day, and it was kinda fun.

Hirota Yusuke's film is not very original, and its computer animation shows through frequently in its style, but it's designed well, I really fell in love with the characters, and I liked the music a lot. 

Poupelle is not the little boy in the movie (his name is Lubicchi – almost everyone has an Italianesque name) but a kind of trash-monster who is formed magically from a jeweled heart that inexplicably descends into Chimney Town. (Let's not worry too much about why.)

Anyway the trash monster and Lubicchi become friends. The story is quite cute, if typical. I'm a sucker for father-son narratives, and this one is definitely that. It has some other really imaginative characters, too, including a gruff boss who's afraid of monsters, a revolutionary welder, and a talkative miner named Scoop. I had a good time.

One little curiosity about 2021's animated films is that the name Bruno has appeared way more times than I expected. From Luca's constant chant of "Silencio, Bruno!" to Encanto's "No se habla de Bruno" to little Lubicchi's dad actually being named Bruno. The name appears numerous times in Poupelle because Poupelle gets a job in Bruno's old shop, and we see his name in a sign over the window a dozen times.

No comments:

Post a Comment