La maison de Jean-Jacques

This National Film Board cartoon uses the Jack and the Beanstalk motif to attack the uniformity of the middle class. That is a fairly easy target, and hardly an original one. In fact, that very same theme, with imagery not dissimilar to that employed in this short, appeared in "Little Boxes", a song written by Malvina Reynolds and released both by herself and by Pete Seeger in the mid '60's, prior to the release of "The House That Jack Built".

This cartoon promotes the facile notion that being rich is really no better than being poor. Comforting thought, yes. True, no.

With its conventional approach to conventional themes, this film about conformity manages to become the object of its own opprobrium, its award nominations notwithstanding.