This week, I thought it’d be interesting to consider how A Cat in Paris might have differed had it been an American picture instead of French.

First of all, the art style. I don’t know enough about French animation (yet) to make any kind of assessment about how typical the simplistic style of A Cat in Paris would be to a French audience. But I do wonder how it would be interpreted in the United States if it were not French. Would an American audience accept this style if it were domestically produced, or would we expect something more polished?

Next, the plot: Having an indoor-outdoor cat is unheard of in US cities, so there’d have to be some sort of contrivance to get the cat outside again and again. The most obvious way would be to have the cat leave through a window while the owners slept. We know that a city pet owner would almost certainly not let their cat outside to roam alone, and that they would quickly start to worry if they noticed it were missing. In Paris, Dino the cat is let out to explore; in New York, he would have to sneak out. There is no way to describe a cat’s leaving the apartment unbeknownst to its owner as anything other than “sneaking out” or “escape”. This would likely change the perception of Dino’s personality from adventurous to mischievous.

A Cat in Paris generally avoided putting Nico and Dino close to the city’s landmarks — except, of course, for the climax on Notre Dame. This sharply cut down on potential observers. Nico and Dino might not be able to find such a quiet, dimly-lit route in New York City. They could still travel the rooftops unnoticed, but I think a New York setting would make their escapades an even stronger statement about people’s obliviousness to their surroundings. Unless they’re in Times Square, how many people in the city look up?

The hidden gems of New York would become the highlight. Scouting NY is the blog of a movie location scout who posts his more unusual finds online. Even a cursory scan of the website reveals some strange sights/sites that Dino and Nico could come across. There’s everything from art deco, to 19th century marble arches, to gargoyles — lots and lots of gargoyles. This new view would make the hypothetical American film as much a love letter to New York as the original was to Paris.

The personalities of talking animal sidekicks have already been discussed by others. In this post, I want to examine their silent counterparts. The silent sidekicks are extensions of the main characters. They express all the outrageous emotion their owners, but on a lighter scale.

Rapunzel’s little chameleon (why on earth she has, of all possible creatures, a chameleon, is still a mystery to me) glares and lunges when Rapunzel is in trouble. Abu, through his angry chittering, expresses the selfish impulses that Aladdin has to control in himself. A Bug’s Life is all about sentient insects, but the ant queen has an aphid as a dog-like pet that growls when the queen is angry.

For whatever reason, we keep coming back to Meeko, so I’ll pull him out again. We have the large-scale drama between the English and the Powhatans reduced to squabbles between a raccoon and a pug. The violence between the humans is daunting; the violence between the animals is fun. The audience is led to root for Meeko, the representative of the protagonist.

The silent sidekick is the cartooniest of cartoons, although still the simplest.