Madeline: Lost in Paris

Madeline, an orphaned girl who attends a Parisian boarding school, receives a letter in the mail from her from her long-lost Uncle Horst from Vienna, who is planning on a visit. He arrives at the school later that week, where he announces that he has been designated Madeline's new legal guardian (shows the court papers to Miss Clavel, her teacher). Horst plans on taking her to his hometown Vienna, to attend a fine finishing school, and plan on leaving the following day via the Orient Express. Madeline and her classmates react with shock, elation, and sadness.

When Uncle Horst and Madeline leave the next morning, he takes Madeline on the Paris Métro, rather than the Orient Express, to a distant and unfamiliar slum that is ravaged with poverty and crime. Worried that she is being kidnapped, Madeline throws beads of her mother's treasured necklace to make a trail to where she is taken to. It is then revealed that Uncle Horst is not Madeline's uncle, but a Frenchman named Henri, who works for Madame LaCroque, the owner of a lace shop/factory. Henri takes Madeline to the lace shop's basement, which is full of illegally trafficked orphan girls who are forced into making laces to sell. One of the girls, Fifi, who is suffering from a terminal illness and has lost most of her hair, befriends Madeline. It is then revealed that Madeline's court custody papers were forged by Madame LaCroque, and that the criminal duo plan to steal her family inheritance as she is forced to work in the factory.

Shortly after Madeline left, Miss Clavel, the girls, and Pepito tried to stop her and Horst so that Pepito could give her his Halloween parting gift: a shrunken head from Brazil. They arrive at the train station, only to learn that the two had taken the Métro, not the Orient Express. They also find Genevieve abandoned at the station. Fearing the worst, Miss Clavel summons the police to help them rescue Madeline.

At the lace shop, the child workers endure enormous amounts of emotional and physical abuse at the hands of LaCroque. One of those instances is when Fifi’s whooping cough turns her lace yellow. Fifi tells Madeline of how LaCroque was once a cabaret dancer who experienced a performance disaster. In total humiliation, she stopped performing and sold her long hair to make lace. She and Henri then opened up the lace shop to launch a criminal enterprise, and gained legal custody all of the orphan girls. Rather than taking care of them (as she promised to the courts), she uses them as her miserable slaves.

Through following the trail of Madeline's beads, Madeline's classmates and Pepito find their way to the factory. Pepito uses his shrunken head to first knock off LaCroque's wig from outside the window (revealing her bald head), and then frighten her to the ground. Meanwhile, Miss Clavel and the police catch Henri walking down a streets in Paris, planning to sell Madeline's belongings. Through a plea bargain deal, Henri agrees to lead them to the lace factory, in exchange for a lighter punishment. Madeline and all of her friends are able to tie up LaCroque in endless rolls of lace just as the police arrive with Henri and Miss Clavel. Henri makes one last attempt to escape, only to be tripped by Pepito's spool trick, allowing the girls to tangle him up as well. The criminal duo are apprehended by the police and taken away, dismantling their criminal enterprise. All the other factory girls, however, still have no place to call "home".

Madeline receives a substantial financial reward for LaCroque's capture, and she uses it to start a school for the lace factory girls. Fifi also recovers from her illness and her hair fully returns. After Miss Clavel congrats Madeline for donating the reward money to open up the school, the girls from both schools rejoice in the fact that they are indeed, one whole family.

In March 1999, the film was announced as the first project from DIC's new "video premieres" division.[2]

Walt Disney Home Video released Madeline: Lost in Paris on DVD on August 24, 1999, with widescreen ratio 1.66:1 and Shout! Factory re-released the film with full frame on DVD on April 3, 2010.[3] It was released in Australia in 2013 by Umbrella Entertainment.[4][5]

• Andrea Libman as Madeline
• Christopher Plummer as The Narrator
• Lauren Bacall as Madame LaCroque
• Jason Alexander as Uncle Horst / Henri
• Stephanie Louise Vallance as Miss Clavel, Genevieve
• Michael Heyward as Pepito
• Brittney Irvin as Chloe
• Veronika Sztopa as Nicole
• Additional voices include Alex Hood, Jennifer Copping, Tabitha St. Germain, Rochelle Greenwood, French Tickner, Michael Heyward, Garry Chalk, Dale Wilson, Jane Mortifee

• "Family" - Madeline & 11 Little Girls
• "We Can Sing, We Can Dance" - 11 Little Girls, Uncle Horst, Mrs. Clavel, Pepito's Mother, Lord Cucuface, Others
• "Oh, Dear, Oh, Dear" - Miss Clavel, 11 Little Girls, Pepito, Madeline and Uncle Horst
• "Where is the Hope That I Once Knew?" - Madeline & Laceshop Girls
• "Together" - Madeline & Laceshop Girls
• "Family" (Reprise) - Madeline, 11 Little Girls, Pepito & Laceshop Girls

William David Lee of DVD Town, criticizing the special, panned the "not very memorable" songs and "simplistic and predictable" story, but recommended the film for young audiences.[6]

• Madeline: Lost in Paris at IMDb
• Madeline: Lost In Paris at The Big Cartoon DataBase