The Rabbi's Cat (2012)

Wonderful character development!

Excellent but underrated film

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Set in Algiers initially, then many places in Africa around 1920.A cat adopts a rabbi and his daughter. The cat, after eating a talking parrot, gains the ability to speak and read. He helps the rabbi with his professional development test. In doing so he invokes God's name; the rabbi passes, but the cat temporarily loses his ability to speak French.A large box of books from Russia; the box also contains a body. Only the cat recognizes that the body is still alive. When the cat awakens the Russian, he finds the prince can understand him (in Russian) even though the others cannot understand him in French.They look for a person in Algiers who speaks both Russian and French. The rabbi finds him and recruits him to translate for the prince.There are a number of philosophical discussions and talks about the politics of the area in 1920. As a side effect of all this, a quest is started to find black Jews in Africa. Getting there was hilarious. It is also revealed that the prince wants to paint all sorts of subjects throughout Africa.The rabbi, the prince, the cat, the rabbi's Arab Muslim friend and his talking donkey set out to find this city. There are lots of changes along the way. The cat regains his ability to speak French. The prince finds his wife. Eventually the prince and his new bride find the city. The humour is outstanding.-----Scores------Art/Animation: 10/10 The style is pen and ink, with minimal shading. This is rather well executed in great detail.Sound: 10/10 Always good.Screenplay: 10/10 Brilliant writing for an ensemble of clever characters. The story is humorous and moves right along, from beginning to middle to happy ending. The comedy of manners aspect is deftly handled.

I really enjoyed this film. It's brilliantly drawn, charming, discusses real events from history, and touches on philosophy. It also takes its time, which is refreshing nowadays. Clearly a lot of work went into this piece of art, which doesn't attempt to be a money making blockbuster.It was neat to see another famous cartoon character make a cameo appearance midway through the film.I'd really like to see more films like this. 8/10. Great work.And now my usual Lorem Ipsum to satisfy IMDb's ten line requirement: But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful.

Winner of this year's Cesar Awards for Best Animated Film, The Rabbi's Cat directed by Joann Sfar and Antoine Delesvaux is based on a comic series by Sfar, which made the narrative seem a little bit too choppy as it sprawls from a focused introduction, to something of a wandering road trip for the second half of the film that didn't seem to have a point other than to drag it out beyond its welcome. Sure it had enough comedy and quirkiness thanks to the titular cat, but alas repetition doesn't serve it well when issues and comical moments get recycled.The animation of course is gorgeous to look at given that it's something different from the usual Hollywood studio products, and hand drawn rather than something polished off a computer, or dabbling with the 3D gimmick (though I read elsewhere that there was a 3D version overseas, which is strange given the lack of usual 3D styled visuals). The cat itself requires a little getting used to for the way it's designed and drawn, looking quite unlike any cat you've seen, with its elongated facial features and an extremely long tail.We follow the adventures of the titular cat, who got his speaking voice (by Francois Morel) thanks to an envy and fatal attack which we don't really get to see, against the parrot of his mistress Zlabya (Hafsia Herzi), the voluptuous daughter of the rabbi Sfar (Maurice Benichou), an easy going religious man. He speaks, to the surprise of his owners, and soon declares that he wants to be a Jew, and to complete the bar mitzvah, in order to get Sfar's approval to remain by Zlabya's side (he has the hots for her you see), instead of being chased away as a monstrosity with his new found voice, akin to being the work of the devil.Much of the narrative for the first half of the film could be seen as an open discussion between religions such as Judaism, Islam and Christianity, set in 1920s Algeria where there's a clash of cultures with the French, as well as the highlighted differences between the various religions, factions and groups that co-existed at the time. One would need to be sensitive of Algeria in that era in order to milk the most of out this picture, given the lack of background focus as it jumps directly into discussions assuming one would be knowledgeable of the issues of the time.But even if you're not, then the second half's road trip is probably where you can still follow, where a whole host of characters got introduced, such as an Arabic Sheik of the desert (Mathieu Amalric) with whom the rabbi, his cat and their entourage got into a tangle with, a Russian painter and an African girl that they pick up, and a surprisingly little episode involving a famous Belgian reporter and his dog. It's all downhill from there in their quest to find utopia, as the narrative meanders in too episodic a fashion without an end in sight, leaving things quite open ended in its finale perhaps promising of more adventures to come, but is probably a cliffhanger just like chapters in the comic books.

Joann Sfar is the director of Gainsbourg, Une Vie Heroique, a film that I loved immensely, one of the best I have seen lately. I was not astonished to learn that his Jewish origins are doubled by some Belgian identity, as he is a well known author of 'bandes dessinees'. The character of one of his most popular series - the rabbi's cat is coming now to screens and we spent a couple of hours in our last day in Paris to see this 3-D animated movie.The story is set in the Algiers of the 30s and the characters are the strongest side of the film. Rabbi Sfar is one of these venerated figures of Sephardi rabbis we would like to see more in real life. He is wise and has a great sense of humor, is tolerant and his best friend is the Muslim sheik Mohammed Sfar (of course, a mirror of himself in tolerance and ecumenicism), he gladly bends the strict rules of Judaic conversions when faced with true love and even pardons the cat who has swallowed his beloved parrot just because it got the divine gift of speaking. The ideal rabbi.Although we get too little time to know the other characters in the story we are already charmed by the daughter of the rabbi and we hope to meet her in the next episodes of what must become a series. A few other colored characters embark in a cross-African adventure with Indiana Jones flavored promises in the search of the ideal Jewish city where pure Jewishness and proud independence is to be found. Short after the city is found and proves to be a militaristic fortress (any hint with present tense on the responsibility of the viewer) the movie quite abruptly ends. So it must have a continuation, as almost nothing is solved from a characters or story development, and as the action happens in the 30s we now know too well what happened to the Jewish world in the 40s.The film has a lot of charm and a lot of flaws. I loved the way it is drawn, which descends from the best French and Belgian tradition in the genre. The 3-D effects seem under-used, and I do not think it will make much difference to see this film in 2-D. The characters are interesting and as a viewer you start caring for some of them almost as soon as they show up on screen. The Jewish world of North Africa is well rendered, and the story of the Russian refugee has a touch of Chagall. The message of tolerance and understanding between faith may be naive but such a message is never preached too often. It is exactly the action component so string in other films of the genre which is missing in this movie, or maybe this was just a prelude, in which case I would preferred to see it together with the first and maybe second episode in the series.