Movie Review: Piccolo, Saxo et compagnie

Piccolo, Saxo et compagnie (Finnish title: Seikkailevat soittimet) a.k.a. Piccolo, Saxo & Cie 

Millimages, Haut et Court, Studio Dacodac, France 3 Cinéma, Canal+, TPS Cinéma, Centre National de la Cinématographie, Eurimages, France, 2006. 

Musical instruments meet to play music. They are a discordant bunch but the Clefs G, F & C (all voiced by Marie-Eugénie Maréchal) keep them in order. The Clefs are stolen and cacophony results. The different instrument families blame each other, string instruments start capturing notes and percussion instruments run around knocking trees down. 

The orchestra

The Clefs

Stampeding percussion instruments

Little note Do (Anaïs Croze) meets woodwind instrument Piccolo (Eugène Christo-Foroux) and brass instrument Saxo (Jean-Baptiste Maunie). They plan to go to Land of Silence to ask advice from grandpa Bassoon (Patrick Préjean). First they trespass the land of string instruments and free the captured notes. After avoiding a stampede of percussion instruments they meet Snare (Camille Donda). 

Do

Saxo and Piccolo

Snare

In the Land of Silence (underworld of old and broken instruments) evil Dr. Hammer (Michel Elias) is building a machine that would replace the classical instruments. Little Brush (Lewis Weill) helps the little instruments to find the missing Clefs. But can they escape before tools chop them to pieces?

Metronome (voiced by Daniel Berreta)

Hammer time!

Little Brush

TV-show level computer animation does not particularly shine, but the characters are colourful and use of musical instruments is a fun idea. The traditional adventure story teaches friendship and giving up prejudices. Kids will learn a bit about different musical instrument families although not as much as could be expected. Also the story takes the controversial position that instrumental music is good and electronic music is bad. The story is loosely based on musical tale of Jean Broussolle and André Popp. 

Part of The 2016 Movie Watching Challenge (#5. Movie that has at least one non-human main character)

Rating: Average

Voice actors: Jean-Baptiste Maunier, Eugène Christo-Foroux, Anaïs Croze, Camille Donda, Michel Elias, Patrick Préjean, Marie-Eugénie Maréchal, Lewis Weill, Daniel Berreta, Lucie Dolène, Caroline Coste, Patrick Delage, Claire Guyot, Lucie Boulanger, Vincent Liebert, Vincent Ropion, Yohann Sauveur, Laurent Morteau 

Directors: Eric Gutierrez and Andre Clavel