Mimickry: "A Monster in Paris"

A Monster in Paris, functional Euro animation from the director of Shark Tale, is pitched at that audience who lapped up Monsters vs. Aliens a few years ago - and anybody else too young to have encountered Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera or Guillermo del Toro's Mimic, from which it cribs some of its best moves. Producer Luc Besson's already mish-mashy live-action comeback Adèle Blanc-Sec may be another influence: Bibo Bergeron's film is set in a turn-of-the-1900s French capital where everyone (even Vanessa Paradis as the chanteuse love interest) speaks English and sings Americanised pop songs, and two friends messing about in a professor's lab can accidentally unleash a ten-foot trilling flea who takes to the rooftops wearing a hat and cape.

Unlike the synthetic Shark Tale, which was rather like observing a fish tank filled to the brim with Sunny Delight, A Monster in Paris is at least attractively designed and lit, unfolding in a pop-up Paris of music halls, funiculars and picture palaces overseen by lovelorn projectionists, but its characters and narrative lack that extra something that would make paying the 3D surcharge entirely essential. The Danny Huston-voiced villain, and Adam Goldberg and Jay Harrington's comic double-act do what they're supposed to, but they're unlikely to be turned into action figures, or encourage multiple repeat viewings on DVD. On the plus side, the Eiffel Tower finale gives root to a pleasingly surreal image involving an outsized sunflower, and the pay-off's sweeter than it really needed to be. It'll do if you've dragged the kids (or the kids have dragged you) to everything else in the multiplex, but basically it's just holding down a screen while everybody waits for The Muppets.

A Monster in Paris is in cinemas nationwide.