Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart Blu-ray Movie Review

Hugo, can you hear me?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 23, 2014

According to the always completely authoritative Wikipedia (ahem), Dionysus was the Greek God of winemaking, religious ecstasy and (my personal favorite) ritual madness (did they have Final Four back then?). There may in fact have been a bit of merry making (as in lots of drinking) when the god’s eponymous French band Dionysos created La Mécanique du Cœur in 2007 as a companion piece to lead singer and multi instrumentalist Mathias Malzieu’s whimsical book that owes a tip of its somewhat frayed top hat to both Tim Burton and Roald Dahl, two artists who have provided recurring inspiration for both Malzieu and Dionysos. There’s perhaps little surprise, then, that the film adaptation of both the concept album and original novel, now titled Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart, can’t quite escape from the looming shadows of these two titans of cinema and literature, not to mention the added penumbras of folks like Henry Selick and Neil Gaiman lurking in the background. Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart follows the well worn trope utilized by all of these people by positing a bizarre outcast who is thrust out into a harsh and unforgiving world and who attempts to not just make his way but perhaps even find true love. The film is bolstered by an often audacious design sensibility, but its narrative flow is haphazard at best, harkening back to somewhat similar flaws found in the grandaddy of all rock operas qua concept albums, Tommy.

In the first of what turns out to be several kind of off kilter tunes sprinkled throughout the film, a young pregnant woman alludes to the frigid weather surrounding her as she stumbles through streets so cold a bird which briefly comes into contact with a river finds itself encased in ice, plummeting to the ground like a rock. The woman barely makes it up a precipitous outcropping to a mysterious looking house, where she’s dragged inside by an equally enigmatic looking resident, who turns out to be something of a witch and (thankfully) a midwife.

Because of the extreme cold, little Jack is born with his heart encased in a block of ice, something that will surely quickly kill the babe. The midwife, whose name is Madeleine, searches through the many tchotkes lining the shelves of her house and performs a rather radical surgery, placing little Jack in a vise (yikes!), removing his natural heart and replacing it with, yes, a cuckoo-clock. Jack’s birth mother watches Madeleine and realizes the elderly woman will make a better nurturing presence for her child than she herself will, and she takes off, never to be seen again.

The film segues forward several years, and it’s clear that Madeleine, while a wonderful surrogate mother, has also been rather overprotective of her charge, to the point that Jack yearns for contact with the outside world. Madeleine has already given him three firm proscriptions that he must obey (including never falling in love) in order to assure his continued health. Nonetheless, he manages to convince Madeleine to let him attend school, which is where the plot really starts to swing into motion. Jack is bullied, especially by an older kid named Joe, but he also spies a gorgeous young girl named Acacia with whom he becomes infatuated. Unfortunately (and predictably), Joe also shares his infatuation, and the two seem headed toward some real ugliness. Joe’s continuing provocations and Jack’s inability to control the spring loaded cuckoo in his heart lead to a calamitous consequence which forces Jack to go on the lam.

At this point the film exercises the first of several kind of weird narrative flights of fancy, placing Jack on a bizarre, almost haunted, train that contains a weirdly menacing figure who chases the poor boy from car to car (the cars expand almost like an accordion or squeezebox bellows, making it well nigh impossible for Jack to really get away). The film has already shied away from utilizing what might have been anchors helping to stabilize its inherent whimsy (for example, not really even emphasizing the fact that the opening sequences supposedly take place in Victorian Era Edinburgh), but beginning here, the film repeatedly veers off into almost surreal territory, without the narrative through line that helps to focus other similar entries like James and the Giant Peach and Coraline 3D.

In yet another of the film’s seemingly random developments, Jack ends up befriending a nattily dressed inventor who turns out to be none other than Georges Méliès, still working on the technology which will ultimately become the moving picture camera. Méliès becomes a mentor and quasi-protector to Jack, urging him not to be afraid of experiencing the joys and traumas that Madeleine had always warned him to stay away from lest he damage the cuckoo clock heart implanted in his chest. That leads the two off on a quest to find Miss Acacia, the beautiful young chanteuse who haunts Jack's every waking moment and indeed even his dreams. (Some may be musing at this point, "Clocks? Georges Méliès? This isn't Tommy, it's Hugo 3D " (minus the 3D part, sadly).

Jack ends up in a mysterious village qua circus where it turns out the beautiful young girl is a featured performer. Jack also ends up working as a “frightener” on an arcade ride. (The film seems intent on aping Johnny Depp at several key moments. The character of Joe is distinctly Depp like, and Jack’s get up as the ride frightener is unmistakably reminiscent of Depp’s look in Alice In Wonderland.) It turns out Miss Acacia herself is pining for the mysterious boy she glimpsed previously, but her poor eyesight means that she fears she'll never be able to identify him should she meet him again. Will Jack be able to convince Acacia that he's that boy, and that the two are destined to be together? Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart is perhaps a bit too nihilistic to deliver a traditional happily ever after to these characters, but it hints at a Romantic (capital R) reality that perhaps supercedes mere mortal contentment.

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart is an explosion of design ingenuity, weaving together disparate elements that include 3D renderings of almost doll like characters, interspersed with sequences that look like paper cutout montages or even surrealist paintings. There's an undeniable sweetness at the core of this film that helps it to overcome some if its narrative hurdles, and while Dionysos fans will probably love the music, musical theater snobs will just as probably react in horror to lyrics that don't rhyme or even scan traditionally (something that's only exacerbated in the sometimes almost annoyingly inept English language version). Still, it's the charm of the visuals that will stick with most viewers the longest, and they're alluring enough to make niggling qualms fall by the wayside. It's therefore a real shame that this domestic Blu-ray release didn't include a 3D option, since so much of the film was obviously engineered to take advantage of dimensionality.

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout! Factory with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. As mentioned above in the main body of the review, though the film received a 3D theatrical exhibition, only a 2D iteration is found on this Blu-ray. While that's a shame, and keeps some of the obvious effects from popping the way they're intended to, this is still a delightful looking feature that benefits from a clear and stable high definition presentation. Digital rendering here is quite whimsical at times, blended with elements that look more "old school", like paper sculpture and collage. Colors are quite nicely modulated, though the film tends to concentrate on burnished hues like ambers, golds and deep rust reds, rather than bright primaries, something that keeps the palette somewhat subdued quite a bit of the time. Contrast is stable, and there are no problematic signs of compression artifacts in the darker sequences. The visual allure of Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart is arguably its strongest element (despite what some Dionysos fans may be thinking), and the good news is that allure is strong and consistent on this Blu-ray.

Update: Shout! has let me know that to their knowledge Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart never screened in 3D, despite the fact that many sources (including Variety, the "show business bible") list 3D exhibitions.

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Both the original French language track as well as an English dub are offered in both DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0. The English translations of some of the lyrics, already admittedly odd and not in any standard form, make an already twee musical score almost annoying at times. For that reason alone, I personally recommend the French language track. Both languages offer seemingly identical mixes, with lovely surround activity including everything from the creep of frost in the early sequences to the roaring train later on and, later still, Acacia's big song and dance routine. Voice work on both languages is fine, and the music is bright, clear and forceful.

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Characters includes everything from concept art to looks at Dionysos creating the music to various interviews dealing with:

  Jack (1080p; 2:01)

  Acacia (1080p; 2:12)

  Joe (1080p; 2:03)

  Méliès (1080p; 2:23)

  Arthur (1080p; 2:39)

  The Aunts (1080p; 2:27)

• From Book to Screen (1080p; 6:20) documents the adaptation process, with some interesting glimpses of the 3D rendering process.

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart can't quite escape the shortcomings of the original concept album and book versions of this property, but it makes up for that lack at least partially through a completely captivating design aesthetic. Sondheim lovers will probably be rolling their eyes at the unusual song (and lyric) forms on display here, and there's no denying the story kind of flits from vignette to vignette without gaining a lot of momentum, but taken on its own rather peculiar merits, Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart has charm to spare. Technical merits here are excellent, though the lack of a 3D version is a major disappointment. Recommended.