Java_Joe Back in the 40's, Walt Disney, gave us "Fantasia" which was a series of animated sketches set to classical music. It was received poorly and critics called it too high brow for the normal viewer. And it was known, for a while, to be Disney's worst movie.Until something miraculous happened, namely the 60's. Hippies and the young crowd loved it and was on it's way to becoming the classic that it is considered today.So in 1976, some Italian filmmaker decided to revisit this concept and made his own move, "Allegro non Troppo" meaning, "to play fast and lively but not too much." The animated sketches, which are supposedly being drawn in real time, are interspaced with real life actors. There's the director, the artist, an orchestra made entirely of old women, and the conductor. The real standout scene is set to Ravel's "Bolero" and shows the remaining contents of a bottle of Coca Cola coming to life and rapidly undergoing evolution. As it's set, a bit like a march, the one Coca Cola creature gives rise to more complex creatures until you have a whole menagerie walking along to the beat. It's been said that anybody wanting to go into animation to look at this section because it's absolutely beautiful.There are numerous other sketches of different styles. Some good, some not so good. There is a bit of cartoon nudity in it so it's really not for young children.

Prof_Lostiswitz ... is the first thing you'll see, as this melange of cartoons is framed by a story of an animator kept chained to a dungeon wall except when there's work for him to do.The "3 Stooges" humour of the live action segments quickly becomes tiresome, as does the film's caprice of being a take-off on Fantasia. The animated segments are ingeniously thought out, but the humour is so vulgar and so Italian that foreigners probably won't relate to it.Now I am going to turn around and tell you to rush out and watch Allegro non Troppo. There is one truly wonderful sequence - Valse Triste, aka Feline Fantasies, aka The Last Meow. The dreams and longings of this homeless pussycat are among the greatest that animation has produced (you can watch it here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX92pHpPc-k ). Those of you who enjoy the work of Yuri Norstein or Martin Rosen would do well to check this out.

Guillaume Gervais "Allegro Non Troppo" is truly a great movie. The storyline, although sample and maybe awkward, is very, very funny.Animations are good, too. The second and third ones are my personal favorite, but the finales are good, too! The storyline can be offending and crude, but that's all the point of it : it's like "Fantasia", from Walt Disney, as it said in the beginning of the movie, but actions made by characters are more adult-oriented (i.e. : sexual connotation).Everybody who loves bizarre movies, animations, and stuff like that should love this movie. It is also posing a critical eye over the modern society, one made of consummation and things like that.Definitely, a must-have!

tuco73 Surely not all of you know the Italian version of Coca Cola... it is called Chinotto, it has better (healthier) ingredients, got more flavour, a bitter-sweet taste, less sparkling effects... in a few words it is pretty good. (Un-)fortunately it cannot challenge the American giant, but for those who know... In a very similar way Allegro Non Troppo stands compared to Fantasia. Fantastic and funny animations, clever and never vulgar, made without a big budget, but with lot of thinking and skills, it creates something quite different from its original model. Obviously the music choice is also very good and both animations and movie (it is not only animation) work fantastically well with the musical selection...You may like it or not, but it surely is a very good and enjoyable effort. Try it once, and you might change your (mass-production) habits...