After being all the rage on the small screen, inseparable Toopy and Binoo are preparing to make the big screen leap in an animated film releasing this summer. With obvious (and contagious) pleasure, Marc Labrèche recorded the voice of the very talkative mouse Toupie at a Montreal dubbing studio this week. The journal went towards him.
A million DVDs sold, 600,000 books sold, a billion views on YouTube… The popularity of the animated series Toopy and Binoo, based on the best-selling books by Quebec author Dominique Jolin, cannot be denied.
Marc Labrèche, who has voiced the character of the mouse Toupie since the making of this 100% Quebec production, knows something about it. Even today, parents regularly ask him to play Toupie’s voice to please their young children.
“Sometimes people come up to me and say, ‘Could Toupie wish my son who just had laryngitis a speedy recovery?'” he says, laughing.
“It leads to some pretty funny situations. But it’s okay… It’s funny and charming.”
Marc Labrèche had been away from the character of Toupie for a number of years before spending three days in the studio this week recording the voice of the exuberant little mouse for the film, directed by Dominique Jolin and Raymond Lebrun. Reuniting with Toopy (and his best friend, the quiet cat Binoo) came very naturally.
“It’s a character that was installed very clearly from the start, with an energy, a freedom and an imagination very similar to mine,” explains Marc Labrèche. Due to the circumstances I am asked to use as much of my personal imagination as possible. So it came back pretty quickly.”
New Characters
In the form of short little stories told in small capsules of a few minutes, the Toopy and Binoo series began in 2005 to seduce young children on the airwaves of Télé-Québec. When series producers Marc Labrèche approached the idea of bringing the adventures of Toopy and Binoo to the big screen, the actor initially expressed some doubts.
“I was curious to see how they would make a film out of it,” he admits. I wondered if it would distort a bit or if it would take the rhythm that was fun in the small capsules. But when I learned that there would be other characters that would twine around Toopy and Binoo, that put my mind at ease.
“The challenge, of course, was to tell a story that held together for an hour and a half. But in the end I think it works fine. We find the same whimsical fantasy and exploded universe that was there in the beginning [dans la série]. I find it funny because we don’t make a lot of films in Quebec that cater to that audience.”
The movie Toopy and Binoo opens on August 11th.