In an industry that deems Angry Birds and troll dolls worthy subjects for feature-length animation, it seems strange that a childrens book as beloved asThe Little Princehas struggled so much to reach the screen.
But as director Mark Osborne himself admits, Antoine de Saint-Exuperys delicate, melancholy tale is not movie-shaped at all.
And so hes remolded it, fitting the very French Prince inside a more straightforward American narrative that begins when a nameless Little Girl moves next door to the books original Aviator (Jeff Bridges), now an old man, and befriends him.
Credit: Netflix
When we meet her, the Girl (Interstellars Mackenzie Foy) desperately needs some joie de vivre: Her summer vacation is a lonely boot camp supervised by a punch in-A single mother (Rachel McAdams) and ruled by a daily regimen of studying and self-improvement.
The kindly, eccentric Aviator offers an escape from all that; with his rickety house full of books and music and exotic knickknacks, he shows her the joy in messiness and the limitless possibilities of her imaginationin other words, how to be a kid.
And with each visit, she grows more fascinated by his stories and drawings of a small yellow-haired boys adventures on an asteroid far, far away.
One of the most inspired choices Osborne (Kung Fu Panda) makes is to build such a striking visual contrast between his two scenarios.
The Girls has the smooth, hyperreal look of modern computer animation, but the Princes is pure magic: beautifully textured stop-motion frames that hold every bend of shadow and light in their crinkled, papery folds.
The seams of the films parallel plots dont always come together quite as neatly; translating de Saint-Exuperys metaphysical oddity into an at least semi-conventional kids movie is a challenge no one may ever quite be able to meet.
But at its inventive bestlike the creation of a little cloth fox who never speaks but steals almost every scene hes init does capture the odd, tender wonder of his world.B+
