I used to have a Lucky Luke illustrated picture book which my Dad picked up when visiting France, and I used to love it, even thought it was in French. I understood a few of the words, but then one day couldn’t find it. I miss it still. I’d love to be able to catch this :)

I’d actually move to France just so I could go to their cinemas. They get so many great animated movies that, if we’re lucky, we sometimes get on DVD, but vey rarely on DVD, yet we do get dubbed imports like The Reef (which came from Korea). Why are British/American cinemas so afraid of quality?

THIS appeals to me much more than typical all-CGI features, which for me have lost their novelty value……hopefully, the public will tire of generic CGI stuff and turn to more traditional fare, such as we see here………….

I may just have to learn to speak French. This movie looks like a lot of fun.

I know Lucky Luke is an old cartoon, but his movies never showed up near where I live. I always wondered if French people made films as entertaining about the USA as the US makers of Pepe’ Le Pew made about persons who speak French. It looks as though they have succeeded here. Okay distributors, start your bidding.

Fantastic — after staring at so much linear, flat-plane work recently it’s refreshing to see traditionally drawn animation in crazed up and down camera angles — just like the books.

I guess I’ll be visiting my local french video/bookstore in the new year when the dvd release comes out.

This does look wonderful! It really is too bad we can’t see it. Although it is nice to know great 2-D animation still exists somewhere.

There is a current Lucky Luke animated series playing on Canada’s APTN network right now, but this feature looks a lot better.
Wasn’t Hanna-Barbera involved in the original series?
This feature really appeals to me, great traditional, cartoony animation mixed with CG…. hope there’s a North American DVD release!

Wow! This looks freakin’ amazing. I’d love to see it. How about a double bill with the recent ASTERIX movie?

Will this one have the american voice actor lip sync like they did with Asterix and the Vikings? That was a lucky find at Amoeba Records I’ll tell ya that.

Looks great!

I’d imagine that a substantial factor as to why this film isn’t seeing a U.S. release is due to most people in America not being that familiar with the Lucky Luke character…

Best looking animated trailer I’ve seen in a LONG time. Love the approach towards the animation that’s being showcased - outrageous, wacky and totally cartoony.

Wish CG features would also look towards exaggerating actions and not just the designs.

I remember being taken to see Lucky Luke at the cinema in Melbourne, Australia when I was very young.
Would have been 1980 maybe.
The television series also played for years “Bang! Bang! Loookey Loook!”.

WOW this looks fantastic!

Times like this you really wish you were living in Europe where people still appreciate a wide range and quantity of comics and cartoons. *sigh*

Jerry,
You used to distribute international animated features. You would know better than anyone why these aren’t distributed. Is it just a financial impossibility?

Prior to his success as “The Glasses Character” Harold Lloyd did some short films as “Lucky Luke” A sort of Charlie Chaplin imitation. There appears to be significant slapstick element to that animated feature. I wonder if there was some inspiration there.

What does it say that a French animation house can make a cartoon about the American West that looks a hundred times funnier than HOME ON THE RANGE?

It says that the French animation house spent about 100 million dollars (translated into the French rate of exchange) LESS than Disney did on ‘Home On the Range’, counting all the time they spent from its ‘Sweating Bullets’ inception.

So wonderfully cartoony. I must see it!

You might not have to move all the way to France to see this. I wouldn’t be surprised if the movie played in some of Montreal’s movie theaters…

Aaaah Lucky Luke…takes me back to my childhood….the 80’s animated series wasn’t that great but MAN can Morris draw hands! The comic was so nicely stylised, with different colours etc.

This trailer looks awesome! I haven’t actually LAUGHED at a movie trailer in years! Bang bang, Lucky luke…doo doo doo

To Jay and Laslo:
Funny, I was thinking the same thing….

Wow, that’s pretty crazy stuff. My French is rusty, but who needs language when you have jokes? I actually laughed at the alligator puse and shoes gag, and I normally can’t stand the “animal turns into food or other product derived from it” joke.

I liked how Luke’s shadow stomped on its hat.
I wish more cartoons did funny stuff like that.

a cartoon movie that’s actually funny! and cartoony! horray!

I caught myself giggling even though I don’t know more than “bonjour” in French. Visual gags are a huuuuge plus. I’d GLADLY trade “Home on The Range” for this.

Good evening, Jerry!

This film opens in cineplexes across Quebec on December 21st. People visiting relatives might want to take it in. Also people who live nearby in Ontario, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and upstate New York can get here easily by car for a day trip.

I was gonna post about it, but I bet more people who read about it this way.

wow looks great, To bad we cant see it here in america. Man I love 2d animation

I don’t know about ya’ll but I’d be willing to sit through this movie without subtitles or anything, just to watch this awesome 2D animation with awesome sight gags.
This is thousand times better than Home on the Range. That movie didn’t even LOOK like fun compared to this!
We NEED to get this film shown here!

Didn’t they do a live-action movie in the 90s based on this character?

Awesome BTW, but probably will never come to America; not so much for its (lack of) familiarity with the character, but for its ethnic caricatures (i.e. Asians and Native Americans).

> joecab says:
> Times like this you really wish you were living in Europe where people still appreciate a wide range and quantity of comics and cartoons. *sigh*

I do! :-)

Really, there are times when I wonder how different my life could’ve been if I had grown up in another country in the 80’s and experienced things different from what we have here in the states (like state-own television, it wasn’t until the 80’s when laws got relaxed allowing private groups to set up TV networks of their own and the satellite boom that followed). I just know I would’ve been a far better anime fan given how much of it was seen in France and Italy in the 80’s over the meager few that showed up here.

>Jonathan Lyons says:
>Prior to his success as “The Glasses Character� Harold Lloyd did some short films as “Lucky Luke� A sort of Charlie Chaplin imitation. There appears to be significant slapstick element to that animated feature. I wonder if there was some inspiration there.

The Lucky Luke here is probably not the same as the one you’re thinking of. This Lucky Luke was a Belgian-Franco comic series that began in the 1940’s by artist Morris, whom drew a clever parody of the mythic American Old West featuring this title character and the adventures he gets into with many familiar characters of the period. In the 1950’s he was joined by writer Rene Goscinny (also the original writer behind Asterix) whom wrote the stories for each album until his death in ‘77, leading to a number of other writers who picked up the slack for years to come. To this day new stores are still written/drawn, though the original creator has since passed away 6 years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Luke

Being reminded of having relatives that had attention a Lucky Luke festival in their native France years ago, where people can cosplay as their favorite characters and such.

> JJ NewArms says:
> Aaaah Lucky Luke…takes me back to my childhood….the 80’s animated series wasn’t that great but MAN can Morris draw hands! The comic was so nicely stylised, with different colours etc.

The only real problem is that hardly any of those albums were ever sold/distributed here in the US, leading to the unawareness of this character in our country, which is a shame since I actually enjoyed some of those stores I managed to read from buying those books online. On the Video Game route, two games had been released for the Game Boy Color and PS1 here if anyone bothers to track then down. Import gamers would obviously find more to explore.

In the case of previous animated endeavors, there was a Lucky Luke animated feature from the 1970’s that was released over here from Walt Disney Home Video, “The Ballad of the Daltons”. In 1983, the publisher for the comics at the time, Dargaud, co-produced a 26-episode TV series with Hanna-Barbera Productions. An English version of this show (some of the voices sound like H-B regulars though the music was credited to Haim Saban & Shuki Levy) was released here on VHS some years ago in a complete set. A second TV series would be produced in the early 90’s.

> Zach says:
> I liked how Luke’s shadow stomped on its hat.

It’s only obvious if you happen to know that Luke is faster than his shadow. :-)

> the Invertabrat says:
> wow looks great, To bad we cant see it here in america. Man I love 2d animation

There’s always BitTorrent (for those that live dangerously)! :-)

> vzk says:
> Didn’t they do a live-action movie in the 90s based on this character?

They had. The film starred Terrence Hill in the title role. Though I’m not sure about it, but I think I’ve spotted cheapo VHS and DVD’s of the Terrence Hill Lucky Luke films being released here in the states, usually in cheap DVD bins.

> Awesome BTW, but probably will never come to America; not so much for its (lack of) familiarity with the character, but for its ethnic caricatures (i.e. Asians and Native Americans).

Ooops, forgot to mention that (to be fair, Asterix had it’s share too)!

Actually, the early charcter Harold Lloyd played was named “Lonesome Luke”. Man I wish I could see that Lucky Luke feature. Now if only they would do a feature cartoon on the air hostess Natacha. Yeah!

I saw the first 20 minutes in Annecy this year. Looked amazing! I hope you americans will get to see this movie.

There are two original Lucky Luke films, Daisy Town (1971) and La Ballade des Dalton (1978) in glorious 2d animation. You can pick ‘em up on amazon.fr marketplace for less than 4 Euros each (about $5 I think). There’s an English option on the menu. Shipping’s not too bad. You’d get both films to the U.S. for about $20!

I’m going to be the lone dissenter and say that “Home On The Range” looks better than this.
I think there’s a different standard when evaluating Disney films. If Disney fails to match the high standards of “Lion King” or “Lilo and Stitch”, animation fans dump all over it. The designs of those bandits resemble villains I’ve seen in General Mills cereal commercials. There’s amazing work being done in Europe to be sure, but this doesn’t exemplify it.

This animation indeed looks pretty awesome. I kind of knew for awhile that foreign animations are usually well made and for less than our American counterparts. If it’s not distributed here in the States, then I’m going to bittorrent this sucker!

So, if any of you guys out there want to pitch an idea for an animated movie, pitch it to foreign animation companies. Don’t ever, EVER pitch it here in America. It’s about money rather than art here.

Ethan said…
> This animation indeed looks pretty awesome. I kind of knew for awhile that foreign animations are usually well made and for less than our American counterparts. If it’s not distributed here in the States, then I’m going to bittorrent this sucker!

Really, the way things ever get done here often sinks to that level it’s unquestionably the best option we have (that and eBay, for which pirated copies of the Asterix features get sold to unsuspecting dupes). It’s as worse as those in the anime community but not as vocal.

> So, if any of you guys out there want to pitch an idea for an animated movie, pitch it to foreign animation companies. Don’t ever, EVER pitch it here in America. It’s about money rather than art here.

Good advice (that and trying to get visas to work there).

During my brief return to Detroit from 1984 to 1987, I found LUCKY LUKE being run on TV Ontario. It was a series produced by Hanna-Barbera. While it was in French, an oddity having a rench Western, I found it highly entertaining. I also have two of the bound comic book issues. I love this level of cartooning, and was quite happy with the general production level for the television series given the quality level the was coming from H-B for much of their domestic network production. It’s too bad there was not an English language version
for an American release.

> So, if any of you guys out there want to pitch an idea for an animated movie, pitch it to foreign animation companies. Don’t ever, EVER pitch it here in America. It’s about money rather than art here.
Good advice (that and trying to get visas to work there).

LES TRIPLETS DE BELLEVILLE, which was French Canadian got a U.S release. I’m hoping the same will happen here. The American idium/translation for TOUS à l’OUEST: UNE AVENTURE de LUCKY LUKE
would be WESTWARD HO!: AN ADVENTURE OF LUCK LUKE, or simply, WESTWARD HO, LUCKY LUKE.

Chuck R. said…
>The designs of those bandits resemble villains I’ve seen in General Mills cereal commercials.

The Lucky Luke bandits “The Daltons” were designed for the comic in the 50’s.
There is a strong possibility that they were an inspiration for the GM characters.

> During my brief return to Detroit from 1984 to 1987, I found LUCKY LUKE being run on TV Ontario. It was a series produced by Hanna-Barbera. While it was in French, an oddity having a rench Western, I found it highly entertaining. I also have two of the bound comic book issues. I love this level of cartooning, and was quite happy with the general production level for the television series given the quality level the was coming from H-B for much of their domestic network production. It’s too bad there was not an English language version
for an American release.

There was an English release for that series. I stated before there was a series of VHS tapes released of it that were made available from a company called “Westhaven Entertainment”, though I’ve only ever spotted them from a local Big Lots location around 2000 or so. Spot a couple of the selling on eBay right now!

How didn’t I know about this before? Fantastic stuff! Finally they are doing something clever, adapting these characters into cartoons that look cartoony instead of limited cartoons or terrible real life movies! Not only it LOOKS great but it also seems to have pretty good gags in the script too, it already seems funnier than most Asterix animated movies.

Also the rendition of characters like Joe Dalton seems to be pretty similar to the comic book.

There was an English release for that series. I stated before there was a series of VHS tapes released of it that were made available from a company called “Westhaven Entertainment�, though I’ve only ever spotted them from a local Big Lots location around 2000 or so. Spot a couple of the selling on eBay right now!

I meant TV, pardner! That’s where the most attraction is gained. LUCKY LUKE is not known to kids, but television exposure would have introduced him.

> I meant TV, pardner!

D’oh! Sorry for that!

> That’s where the most attraction is gained. LUCKY LUKE is not known to kids, but television exposure would have introduced him.

That’s true. Being reminded of course having seen that one Lucky Luke film on Disney Channel back in it’s heyday of the 80’s (along with the three Asterix features they also released on home video then). It is rather a shame when you notice how much we missed out on seeing certain things because those TV channels (both terrestrial and cable/satellite) didn’t find them profitable enough to take notice (thinking of a few Euro-toon gems that appeared on Nick in my childhood I can’t hardly find nowadays).