Critic Reviews

The characters aren't quite stylized enough; though they have skinny bodies and disproportionately big heads, their just-realistic-enough facial features often veer into the Uncanny Valley.

The film is at once enabled and hindered by its utter strangeness, an intrinsic quality surely exacerbated in its English-language release.

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart stubbornly remains less than the sum of its parts. But its rich visual imagery suggests the talented artists involved could create something exciting and truly original if they had a better script.

Rather than linger on the project’s shortcomings, which only disappoint relative to the story’s incredible creative potential, it should be said that in partnership with Berla, Malzieu has created a fully realized, wildly imaginative storybook world and populated it with eccentric characters.

There’s no humor and no pathos. The Cuckoo-Clock Heart, pretty as it is, lacks any heart at all.

This computer animated work has strikingly designed characters, and some good isolated sequences, but the script’s un bordel (French for shambolic mess).