Its soundtrack album was released on 9 January 2007. It received the Imagina Award in the category Prix du Long-Métrage.
ARHTUR AND THE INVISIBLES SERIES
It also spawned multiples video games, an animated television series and theme park attractions at Futuroscope and Europa-Park. The film's success in France spawned a media franchise with two sequels, Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard (2009) and Arthur 3: The War of the Two Worlds (2010), and a spin-off, Arthur, malédiction (2022). The film was also a box-office success in France but under-performed in the United States. It received positive reviews from critics in France but was received negatively in the United States, with criticism aimed at the animation and script, but praises for the voice performances and visual aspects. With a budget of €60 million, it was briefly the most expensive French film production, until it was surpassed by Astérix at the Olympic Games (2008). It was re-released in France on 4 April 2007 with nineteen minutes of bonus footage. It is based on the first two books of the Arthur children's books series, Arthur and the Minimoys and Arthur and the Forbidden City, by Besson.Īrthur and the Invisibles was released theatrically in France on 29 November 2006 by EuropaCorp, followed by wide releases in a number of countries. There is a journey down a river inside a straw, a chase sequence involving a toy Ferrari, and an off-the-hook battle sequence atop a record player that blasts, among other tunes, “Lonesome Town” and “Stayin’ Alive.” Always summoning our consciousness and making known that it has the survival of its human and nonhuman characters alike, Arthur and the Invisibles ends hopefully, but not before Mia Farrow ushers a bad guy out the door with some espresso.Arthur and the Invisibles or Arthur and the Minimoys (French: Arthur et les Minimoys) is a 2006 English-language French fantasy animated/live-action film directed and co-written by French filmmaker Luc Besson. Like Arthur’s grandfather, Besson is always harnessing image and light, playfully contrasting truth-seeking elements from both of the film’s worlds (note the parallel between the lantern Arthur’s desperate grandmother hangs from her front porch and the floating creature that acts as a nightlight for Arthur, Selenia, and Betameche when they go to sleep inside a flower). The film’s live-action scenes have a splendiferous cartoon wonder about them, just as the cartoon elements are remarkably lifelike, meaning the story’s real and fantasy realms immaculately blend into one another. When body, spirit, and soul come together, Arthur is shrunk to a pint-sized version of himself, entering the cartoon world of the Minimoys to defeat the evil M (David Bowie) with the help of Princess Selenia (Madonna), two days shy of her millennium birthday, and her little brother Betameche (Jimmy Fallon). A Shakespeare quote is the first of many clues that will lead Arthur to a telescope-cum-portal whose lenses represent a holy trinity of promise. The breathless staccato editing does not allow for very many pauses between dialogue and a character’s thought and subsequent action, mirroring the breathless quest of a lonely young boy, Arthur (Freddie Highmore), to save his grandmother’s house by finding the miniature land of the Minimoys his missing grandfather warmly charted in vivid water colors throughout the pages of his journals. The film’s running time-snipped from a reported 103-points to Harvey Weinstein, but the message of this spiritual-minded animation never feels compromised.
Luc Besson’s Arthur and the Invisibles clears the smog left behind by the year’s dubious family entertainments.