Poupelle of Chimney Town was sweet and delightful, a 2021 delight that flew under the radar with its sweet celebration of Halloween and… trash. Telling the story of chimney sweep Lubicchi and his magical garbage-made best friend, Poupelle, that first film had some heartwarming, Ghibli-esque magic. When I heard there was a sequel produced, the unnecessary sequel questions began to emerge. After all, the first tied up with a pretty neat bow of finality. Chimney Town: Frozen in Time somehow manages to surpass the tender brilliance of the original by crafting an all-new story that recalibrates its emotional core. By dealing with themes of love and loss amongst its zany, Adventure Time-caliber characters, director Yusuke Hirota and his creative team have expanded and richly deepened what came before. Frozen in Time is a worthy sequel that left me in tears.
As the film starts, Lubicchi still clings to the memory of Poupelle. Even with the actual town’s black smoke in the rearview, Lubicchi longs to revive his bestie. He sleeps clutching a fragment of Poupelle’s bracelet. There’s some mysterious voiceover about the overlapping hands of a clock, but it’s not immediately clear why any of this matters, or is relevant to the story being told. Chimneys still need cleaning, so life continues. Yet, Lubicchi has stopped speaking of Poupelle. His friends sense the silence. Has he given up, or is he just carrying his grief in private? When a wild mouse snatches Poupelle’s bracelet, Lubicchi chases after, ending up in some fantastical fountain that transports him to another world.
When Lubicchi awakens, he’s in a vast sea aboard a courier ship beside a talking cat he later names Fluff. The narrative expands into this mythic realm. “Couriers” deliver newborn lives, time converges at the Millennium Fortress, and only the authorized may approach its inner sanctum. The ambitious whimsy wonderfully expands the fantastical nature of this Japanese delight. Lubicchi is tasked with repairing a giant stopped clock whose frozen hands overlap just before midnight. If he succeeds, he may return home. In order to figure out how to get the gears moving again, Lubicchi and Fluff embark on a quest to find the proper clockmakers to repair them. Fluff steals the show a bit as the sassy cat companion that constantly interjects surprisingly intelligent commentary.
At the same time, a seemingly disconnected portion of the story starts to unfold. This concerns Gus, the keeper of clockmakers, and Nagi, an ethereal singer living among orphans, who performs at a local club. Through flashbacks, we learn of a catastrophic fire, a forbidden love story, and the significance of the clock tower, frozen in time. While initially skeptical that any of this could connect in a convincing way, every thread ties together into a moving and altogether breathtaking conclusion. The impact of tackling grief was unexpected, strangely elevating Frozen in Time above the heights that its predecessor dared to approach.
The animation is just as stunning as it was in Poupelle, this time allowing for far more character models and lush landscapes. There were only a couple of brief moments where effects seemed unfinished. If the previous movie felt a little Frosty the Snowman, this one leans more Pixar wondrous. The kind of attention to detail sets both Chimney Town entries apart from others in the best kind of way. My primary gripe about Poupelle was a villain missing in action. While there still is not a true villain of the piece, the conflict burrows even deeper into the soul than a campy baddie would have allowed. Perhaps there could be future adventures that take place in this world. However, matching the emotional peaks they were able to accomplish with the narrative parallels will be a difficult feat. Rare is a sequel that surpasses the original, and Chimney Town: Frozen in Time manages that with a classy and time-specific approach.
Chimney Town: Frozen in Time debuted at 2026’s Berlinale International Film Festival.
