The famous Beatle's son voices a giant singing insect for animated French film.
If he was still around today, it's not hard to imagine John Lennon really digging the animated musical movie A Monster in Paris — and not just because the famous Beatle's son Sean Lennon voices a 7-foot singing flea in the film.
Some of the younger Lennon's oldest and most precious memories are from watching cartoons and classic Disney movies with his animation-adoring dad, so it's a highlight in his diverse career.
"It's certainly my first venture into the insect kingdom," Sean Lennon, 37, says with a laugh. "For me to finally be able to breathe some life into an animated flea was awesome."
In the film, out Tuesday on 3-D Blu-ray from director Bibo Bergeron (Shark Tale), Lennon stars as Francoeur, a flea who, thanks to a combination of chemicals, grows gigantic and develops a smooth crooning voice in Paris circa 1910.
He becomes the toast of the town's nightlife when he puts on a suit and mask and does showstopping duets with a talented French singer named Lucille (Vanessa Paradis). However, she has to enlist the aid of a shy projectionist (Jay Harrington) and a cocky inventor (Adam Goldberg) when Francoeur is deemed a monster by an obsessed police commissioner (Danny Huston).
Most probably wouldn't be able to connect with an insect that's the bane of pet owners everywhere — even if it could carry a tune — but Lennon found the story of A Monster in Paris universal in the fact that, like everybody, he felt a little bit like a freak when he was young.
"I stuck out like a sore thumb in the school I was in as a kid," says Lennon, the only child of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. "It was obvious that things were kind of different for me back home, and I always felt awkward among my school mates, at least in the beginning.
"As I grew up, I made a lot of good friends and I really fit in and had fun. But in the beginning, I felt very uncomfortable about being a celebrity child and being identified as that. In a way that made me feel awkward and I can relate to feeling like a monster in New York."
The beast has a beauty of sorts in Monster, and Lennon was able to sing alongside Paradis when recording for the film. They go way back and met through Lenny Kravitz, who produced Paradis' 1992 self-titled album and also worked with Lennon when he was 15.
"She's disarmingly kind and comfortable," Lennon says of Paradis, the ex-girlfriend of Johnny Depp. "She's surprisingly easy to hang out with. Sometimes you expect people like that to be intimidating but she's just really fun and we had a great time."
Lennon got the gig from another friend of his, Matthieu Chedid. A composer who goes by the moniker "-M-," he created the music for the film and was Francoeur's singing voice in the original French version. Chedid first reached out to Lennon to do French-to-English translations, and then signed him on as a voice actor.
Lennon admits he changed how he sung slightly so he could sound more like Chedid's Francoeur.
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