Did you know Daft Punk did an animated movie? Well they did. It’s called Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem and it’s basically an almost 2 hour music video dedicated to the French duo’s album Discovery, released in 2001. Now I will admit that this movie is not for everyone, considering there is no dialogue only music, and some people, who are wrong, don’t like the group of French robot DJs.

Anyway I digress, to the plot! So in another solar system, but maybe not, we have a society of Blue Alien people who are literally just enjoying the sounds of the planet’s greatest band. Many people may know this opening scene because it was the music video for the band’s single One More Time. Everyone’s having a good time, but terror strikes and the band is kidnapped by an evil corporate human with a plan to utilize their talent to his advantage.  So cues in the male lead, probably a self-proclaimed biggest fan of the group, who sets out to save them, with Digital Love playing smoothly in the background. It’s a familiar plot line in some ways, but is made into so much more, I personally feel, with the soundtrack.

So our characters mostly consist of the band, named after the song Crescendolls named who consist of Stella the bassist, Arpegius the guitarist, Baryl the drummer, and Octave the vocalist and keyboardist. Our other characters are villain Earl de Darkwood, their producer, and our hero Shep. There’s no dialogue so really you have to get a feel for the characters through their actions. This makes it harder to know the band as they are brainwashed for a majority of the movie, which means their actions may not even be out of choice, so for a while during the story we don’t really know how to feel about our music leads. We do however somewhat see a need to just play the music in them, because it is something they love to do, even if they’re being forced to do so. Our hero is very much a hero? Willing to do whatever it takes to save the band his people love so much. The villain is doing what a villain does, which is do whatever he can for his own benefit. Then we have our producer who is just the cutest most excitable thing, who loves the Crescendolls music and is ecstatic when he is allowed to make them a number one hit on Earth. Each character is sort of an archetype is we count the band as one person. This isn’t bad, though some may disagree, because it’s sort of about the music when it comes down to it.

Now animation wise this anime is very clean and well done for its 2003 time, Leiji Matsumoto was the visual supervisor while Shinji Shimizu produced the animation and Kazuhisa Takenouchi directed it. Each character is actually very separate from the others, all having their own unique design that pertains to the type of character they are in a way. It’s sort of space age and it’s probably one of the most well animated movies I have seen. It’s also something I haven’t seen done since, something on that scale at least. In the film even the backgrounds were interesting, with Shep’s ship being one big giant guitar and the opening concert seen which shows everyone having a good time. Everything still holds up actually which is impressive considering the low animation quality of the time. The art only really helps accentuate the music really, which I feel is the most important role for this film.

As was stated earlier the only sound in this film is Discovery and that actually adds to the movie for fans of Daft Punk, because it properly conveys more than dialogue can. When we hit the song Digital Love we have Shep singing the song and expressing his own feelings in an innocent way with lines like, “Last night I had this dream about you, in this dream I’m dancing right beside you.” Which is vastly different to when he later is speaking to the band with Something About Us cooing in the background, “It might not be the right time. I might not be the right one.” Then we have the scenes where our music group is being brainwashed to the song Harder Better Faster Stronger, fitting the dark mechanical tone. Daft Punk and their team clearly know where to put music appropriately in film as seen in another film they did, Electroma, and they use that knowledge to their advantage. There is never a point in the film where I felt like something was out of place; everything flows very well, creating just a fresh welcoming to the show.

The only issue remains that there is no dialogue, which could make some people stay away from this work, while I think it adds to it. Not everyone is going to enjoy this film, but I definitely think it’s worth taking a look at. It holds up well to this day and it’s personally one of my favorites. This makes me a bit biased in my scoring but maybe someone will love it as much as I do.

Interstella 5555: 8/10