Edinburgh, late 19th century. Little Jack is born on a day so cold that his heart remains frozen. Madeleine the midwife replaces his heart with a cuckoo-clock. It will work, as long as Jack follows the rules, mainly not falling in love. But his encounter with a fiery-eyed girl singing on a street corner and his decision to chase after her will test the resistance of his makeshift heart to the breaking point... Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart is a magnificent love story set in an exciting period full of fabulous inventions, eccentric characters and fantastic adventures. Adapted by Mathias Malzieu from his best-selling novel and the gold-selling album by his band Dionysos, this superbly animated movie is about passion and acceptance of others.

The visual animation of this movie is notches above the average Pixar and Disney fare, especially in its attention to details and inventiveness, framed from interesting perspectives with captivating clarity.

It started of with enough heart ('cuckoo' no-doubt) and sufficient bizarre to draw you in. Unfortunately, about a quarter of the way through the plot starts to falter with too many unnecessary songs that doesn't add to the story but only detracts from it - songs that are averagely catchy but tend to be repetitive and too pop-oriented to capture the essence of the movie.

The reason for all the intrusive songs is as follows from Wikipedia: "Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart is based on the concept album by the French rock band Dionysos, and on the illustrated novel La Mécanique du cœur written by the band's lead singer Mathias Malzieu. The music of the film was entirely composed by Dionysos"

May have worked as an audio album, but for this movie, Luc Besson (one of two producers) should have instructed that the visuals and the story alone be allowed to do the "singing", backed by good inspiring theme music.

The English dubbing (from the original French) is definitely one of the better done ones - I suspect many (but not all) of the original French actors, also did the voice-over in English, including most (but not all) the songs.

Overall, would still strongly recommend this animation, if but for the visual feast alone!