I finally saw this last night.
When Johnny C noted in the Black Swan thread that every dumbass he knew would rather see "Due Date," I felt a similar thing should be said about this film. Granted it has been gradually released for a little while now, this was its opening night at the theater I saw it at (which is a large theater), and the audience consisted of myself, my girlfriend Mary, a woman directly in front of us, a man about three rows down, and a dude who watched maybe the first five minutes and then LEFT (really dude? like, did you get confused and thought Martin Lawrence was going to be in this?...).
Another note from the theater experience was whoever put together the opening previews must have just figured, "d'uuhhhmmm, this is an animated movie, so how about an ad for
Rango and
Rio," two children's movies (granted Rango looks like something I would say, "huh, that looks ok," and then NEVER see it, Rio just looked like typical garbage).
Anyway, on to the film. I really appreciated this much more than Triplets of Bellville. I really liked the animation style utilized in Bellville, but at times the contortions to the character's features was a lot to take in. Not bad. Just a lot. This was toned down very much in the Illusionist. It is still Chomet's unique animation style and the characters were very recognizable as his own, but it was easier, for me to focus on the story. Everything presented looked absolutely beautiful and I'm really happy I was able to see this in theaters, and really annoyed that when it comes out and I start forcing my friends to watch it when we hang out, they will undoubtedly say, "wow, this is awesome, when did it come out?" And I will say, "fucking four months ago I told you all about it but you did not want to go see it with me."
Anyway, this movie was really satisfying to see in a theater (not NECESSARY to the enjoyment, but still very satisfying) and to any QC boardies, I once again stress that this should probably be seen before it;s outta theaters.
To the question posted above (spoilerzz)
I think he was just being nice... ... I started feeling like she was sort of manipulative by making him buy her all this nice stuff because she
knew he was nice, so I think maybe he felt betrayed in some way... it's difficult to explain, but I think the idea was he was providing all these nice things for her and she was taking him for granted (we even saw a bit of proof of her assumption that people would just naturally support her when she seemed to ask the guy she started dating to buy her the necklace). So when he saw the two of them together he felt awkward...
Honestly, it really was hard to tell if he was physically attracted to her or not, but I'm guessing the idea was that he was not. I'd be interested to see an opinion thinking he was, though, and what would specifically indicate that.