April in the Extraordinary World is a smart film that is fun to watch. Gallic wit and love of history move forward right away in a somewhat elaborate history of how this alternative era came about. The militant Napoléon III, killed in a lab accident, is succeeded by Napoléon IV, who promptly signs a peace treaty and averts the Franco-Prussian War. Science stagnates as leading scientists mysteriously go missing, and we soon see a 20th century world with none of the benefits of early modern scientific discovery. As imagined by Jacques Tardi, an intelligent design reigns in the look of this alternative world.
Without scientific progress, we find the Twin Towers in this world are designed not by Emery Roth but by Charles Eiffel. In another witty gesture, Pop’s phonograph doesn’t run on electricity, since that hasn't been discovered, but a small steam engine powers the record player. And with no internal combustion engines, the film casts witty asides about airships and cable cars; an announcer enthuses about a mere 87-hour trip to Berlin and proclaims the opening of a bridge between France and England, tunnel-drilling equipment evidently being un-invented. And the summit of Montmartre is now a monument to one of the Napoléons rather than Sacre Coeur. This extraordinary world is one conceived with great wit.
There’s other cleverness at work here, too. Darwin doesn’t have as much dialog as one might expect from a talking cat in a French movie, but he’s sharp when he appears. Near death, Darwin describes how he's looking forward to meeting Charles Perrault, though he says he’ll tell the author of Puss-in-Boots a few things about cats. And Darwin is a typically aloof cat with his controlled manner, so his sudden lunges every time a rat appears are quite funny, lunges he unapologetically later explains as instinct. Neither is he above teasing the humans, especially the not-always-sharp Julius. “You’re in looooove,” he purrs, like a junior high kid teasing another. And the portrayal of various famous 20th century scientists is also smart. It’s not hard to recognize them – Einstein, Marconi –but when we see them giving their overlord lizard a massage or playing classical music in a quartet for him, there’s a humorous irony at play, and one related to a theme of the film.
In addition to having so much wit, April and the Extraordinary World is simply a pleasure to watch. It has wonderful steampunk machines, like the house that turns into a Jules-Verne-style submarine and a walking machine with gangly, mechanically-jointed legs. And there’s a flying aircraft that carries its legs like a fly. The lizards have exoskeletons they’ve designed for themselves that let them walk upright on two legs. In addition to such 19th century fantasy imagery, we see the Petit Palais as a ruin with steam machines and a giant oak growing in the middle, and when the heroes exit Paris underwater via the Seine, there’s a passing shot of a skeleton at the wheel of a sunken vessel. This film knows its visual strength, and it borrows an idea from Up in telling April’s later story through photos hung on a wall. There’s always something worth looking at in this film.
For all this, April and the Extraordinary World is still a children’s movie. It approaches some heavy subjects, but it only gives passing shrift to them. April has to learn to trust others and reach out, but that theme emerges from three mostly unconnected scenes. The film also has an anti-authoritarian bias, but it doesn’t dwell on that idea. There’s also an ethical warning here about science being turned to bad uses, but that idea surfaces at odd times, sometimes in an on-the-nose comment. There’s an environmental message here, too, about over-exploitation of resources. But this film isn’t consistently interested in any of these ideas. It’s mostly an intelligent, visually-engaging romp, and it is very worthwhile for all it has to offer in that realm.
