The Rabbi's Cat (2012)
Average Rating: 7.6/10
Reviews Counted: 16
Fresh: 15 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 931
My Rating
Movie Info
Based on the best-selling graphic novel by Joann Sfar, The Rabbi's Cat tells the story of a rabbi and his talking cat - a sharp-tongued feline philosopher brimming with scathing humor and a less than pure love for the rabbi's voluptuous teenage daughter. Algeria in the 1930s is an intersection of Jewish, Arab and French culture. A cat belonging to a widowed rabbi and his beautiful daughter, Zlabya, eats the family parrot and miraculously gains the ability to speak. Along with the power of speech
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Cast
-
François Morel
The Cat -
Maurice Bénichou
The Rabbi -
Hafsia Herzi
The Rabbi's Daughter -
François Damiens
The Reporter -
Mathieu Amalric
The Prince -
Jean-Pierre Kalfon
Malka of the Lions -
Fellag Sheik
Mohammed Sfar -
Marguerite Abouet
The African Lady -
Sava Lolov
The Russian Painter
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All Critics (16) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (15) | Rotten (1)
It's a wild and vivid ride and a spirited reminder of the kinship between Jewish and Arab cultural traditions.
Top Critic"Ambitious" isn't the word here; "random" is more like it.
The film presents an often sharp commentary on dueling beliefs and idiocies that unfolds in lush pastel hues and distinctively retro drawings.
Though we wander a bit, the trip is a delight, thanks to the witty company.
An absorbing, nuanced, and vividly animated tale of adventure, ambivalent morality, colonial injustice, talking animals, and the vagaries of religious zeal and colonialism.
It is often colorful, witty and inspired, but also too episodic, and lacks a strong ending.
Like the title character, the makers of The Rabbi's Cat follow their noses wherever a new scent leads. Their eternal curiosity buoys this Cat, then impairs it somewhat, but redeems it by the end.
Sfar's enchanting portrait of a society in which Jews and Muslims live compatibly is a lesson for our time
It's a movie that packs all its ideas in beautifully animated doses, filled with Northern African music and landscapes. It may get clunky, but it's easy to get lost in its loveliness.
One of the most grown-up animated features of the modern age.
A French animated film about the unusual quest of a rabbi, a skeikh, and a talking cat to discover the essential unity of life.
Fascinating, clever animated tale not meant for young kids.
While the scenes don't always fit together thematically or tonally, each one is its own polished gem.
Despite its flaws, the film is at least a consistent vision, attesting through both its story and animation to the rabbi's right to be different while also striving for human solidarity.
For someone as gifted as Sfar at visual storytelling, the film is very, very talky. That said, voice work in French is a delight.
Audience Reviews for The Rabbi's Cat
Making use of a protagonist animal, which even questioned why humans all the time, "The Rabbi's Cat" works more as a reflection on the great philosophical and religious issues, than as a conventional story.
The work ends up being quite satisfactory, especially for those looking for a more entertainment-oriented real-life issues, where the visual beautiful, a colorful fascinating and fantastic content, serve as a touch of creativity and lightness in treating problems of considerable complexity today.
8.5/10.0
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Latest News on The Rabbi's Cat
December 7, 2012:
Critics Consensus: Playing for Keeps Misses the MarkThis week at the movies brings only one new release: Playing for Keeps, a romantic comedy starring...
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Foreign Titles
- Le Chat du Rabbin (DE)
- The Rabbi's Cat (Le chat du rabbin) (UK)
Set in 1920s Algeria. A cat in Algiers swallows a parrot and it can speak its mind.
The plot focus cat's relationships with his open-minded sensual mistress, and her father, who is rabbi. The cat suspects about being Jewish himself to roam around the mistress and thus wants to go through circumcision and bar mitzvah - A Russian packed in a coffin-like box claiming to be Jew and plans to head to Ethiopia - ultimately all set out to take him to Ethiopia, including the Cat, the rabbi, a donkey, a big-mouthed Jew.
Charming. colorful and at some instances hilarious. Though unsuitable for the young children, film takes unbound indecent references.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Most of the people in the west; wrongly refer/mean 'Arabs' as being Muslims. Arabs can be Muslims/Christians/Jews. Christian doesn't mean to have been born in the US, UK, Italy or France, or Jew doesn't mean to have been born in Israel or Italy - All three religions have their foundation in Middle-East. If the people in the world were to refer Muslims comparatively as Arabs, due to combined population of most of Muslim countries in one region, then all three countries of South-Asia namely Pakistan, India, Bangladesh make up the far greater population than all Muslim countries of Middle-East - Hence, it's embarrassing on account of filmmakers and the people to keep repeating this mistake. Indonesia is the largest Muslim populated country in the world.