Silent Night, Deadly Night, Ella McKay, Kokuho, Pets on a Train

Pets on the Train
★★
(PG) 87 minutes

There’s a piecemeal quality to it, even by CGI family entertainment standards. Pets on the TrainEnglish dub made in France but featuring a mostly Canadian voice cast, aiming to keep its origins secret, at least in the version released in Australia.

The story begins shortly before Christmas in a city on the west coast of the United States; Although the cityscapes are rendered in a semi-realistic style that evokes a European cartoon tradition, judging by the palm trees, Spanish mission architecture and jokes at the expense of show business stereotypes – tintin Instead of Disney or Dr Seuss.

More in the Hollywood mold is the wide-eyed but slippery hero Maurice (voiced by Wyatt Bowen), a brave raccoon who prefers to be known as Falcon and fancies himself a master criminal, but his typical adventures don’t go much beyond eating hot dogs from street carts.

Persuaded to take part in a more sophisticated heist, the man is set upon by a malevolent badger (Chimwemwe Miller) and finds himself stranded on a runaway train hurtling towards almost certain destruction.

Although there are no human passengers on board, there are numerous animals kept locked in cages in the luggage compartment; among them are a suspicious police dog (Tristan D. Lalla), a foppish bloodhound (Terrence Scammell), and too many other animals (too many, in fact, for any of them to emerge as characters we can fully invest in). Will our hero be able to free them, gain their trust and take them to safety?

At this point in the story, the view out the window looks a lot like the Mojave Desert, which makes sense enough geographically. Then suddenly we find ourselves in a completely different landscape; the train winding around grey, foggy mountains as if we were progressing from one level to the next in a video game.

It’s actually a video game Pets on the Train it mostly looks like – treating a strangely arbitrary, obviously derivative plot as the basis for a series of logic puzzles that the characters must come together to solve before time runs out.

The biggest puzzle for co-directors Benoit Daffis and Jean-Christian Tassy was how to make the most of limited resources. But like calculating directors of B-movies everywhere, they find ways to use music, sound, and abrupt editing to make it feel like we’re watching more of the show than we actually are.

They also offer a moment of genuine surrealism, although you can almost blink and miss it. About a minute into the opening credits, as the train speeds towards the station in the middle of the city, it overturns for no apparent reason and lands sideways in an empty park.

This next part is straight from Monty Python, otherwise The Lego Movie. A giant hand reaches into the shot and grabs the train, presumably to put it on the tracks – at which point we cut away and the story continues as if none of this had happened.

However, some questions still remain in mind. If the entire movie below takes place on an incredibly detailed model train set, who is actually at the controls? God? Santa Claus, who appeared almost simultaneously as the mascot of a nearby store? A lucky kid who gets his gifts early?

As with everything Pets on the TrainIt’s best not to think too much about it, especially since Daffis and Tassy never break the fourth wall so blatantly anywhere else. But even though it’s under 90 minutes, the movie drags on so long that I’m starting to wonder if a second Christmas miracle might save time.

Pets on the Train In cinemas on Thursday