The Little Prince

I could predict the movie ending by the first few minutes or so and I told my wife "okay, let's see if it can still be entertaining on the details...". Oh boy, I may never been so glad to be so wrong. I mean, of course I was hoping for it to be good, but I was expecting very, very little of it. Most animations I've been watching in the past 2 years or so, including Pixar's, have not being able to move me at all. At all. And IMDb score was just below what I'd expect from a good one.

( Okay, Inside Out was an exception: great and cute. Maybe my hopes for that one were too high but I was hoping for a better neural representation there, and it had some weak science behind it ( don't take my or Steve Novella's word for it, do your homework ). I would argue it is even harmful, because it will certainly create new bad myths about the mind and the brain. )

Anyway, Little Prince at least isn't about science - because else they'd get it wrong at very least on the lucid dreaming there... But it's perfectly done. Perfectly. Every little detail. Right near the beginning the girl gets a new friend and starts to wonder how his stories could be possible. While she is thinking, the wind in the background is moving engines. That's art. And science, even if only subconsciously. Even if.

The symbolism there is exquisite. I have watched a few french movies, I do know a little about the culture there, I've toured through France more than any other European country in my 2013 tour... I haven't seen anything like this before. Maybe I will need to take my french classes back again, eventually.

Here, let me tell you about 2 math formulas that appear in there (not the only ones, the first book she does open is about math, probably algebra, but in french sorry), for a few seconds: first one is about analytical geometry, and got an Escher picture in it. Now, in Brazil we don't learn any of that in school, not even Calculus, but I've gone to first year of Statistics and 1 got semester of Math in there... That shoot is complex! The only thing I can say about the first picture is she got a great compressed writing and thinking there. This to me means more than anything that whoever wrote the script (I haven't read the book) was an avid math enthusiast (like myself) at very least.

On the second one, however, she gets on to some Calculus, which to me was one of the funnest parts in school (after geometry, and I didn't really enjoy Math in college). Math was always my favorite topic in school. And that's a "simple" 3rd degree expression. All I can say is it's not being properly resolved, at first sight. But I bet there's a meaning there I just can't see yet. This is how this movie was made. Filled with tiny little details at every single second.

I'm very good at Math and at counting, but I can't even understand what the 6 year old is doing in her book there and those are images that just don't matter to the plot or for anything else, really. They're there on their own!

I'll make a real bold guess here, but I think this have became instantly my favorite film of all times. On top of Forrest Gump, Matrix, any Pixar's, Bedazzled, Terry Gilliam's, Huckabees, Stranger than Fiction, BttF, 2001, Interstellar, The Martian (still unwatched), Terminator you name it. I know almost nobody would agree with me here, but that's just how I felt having just watched the movie less than 8 hours ago.

It touched me deeply, and it did so by touching both my heart and brains, like no other one ever did. 34 year old, happily married, with no kids due to life issues, no job and lots of work to do. Specially after being this inspired. =)

-- Caue

I usually love the French animations, because unlike American, the stories, musics, characters that influences the thousands of year cultural history. Definitely not comparable to the Hollywood standards, but it had its own technical brilliance. All I wondered was why this film was in English language.

It deserves to be on the upcoming's big occasion (2016 February), if it is eligible for the American Academy Awards. From the director of 'Kung Fu Panda' original movie, which was partially based on the children's novel. The book adaptation is the stop-motion animation and the remaining story's the regular 3D animation.

Just remember the movies like 'What Dreams May Come' and 'The Lovely Bones', those magical worlds and breathtaking landscapes. Usually animations are associated with comedy genre, especially when a child character attached to it. This film was not even a comedy, more like those two titles I mentioned.

The screenplay wise it was a very 'Neverwas' type, except this one was an animation. But appropriate for people of all ages. The kids can realise the importance of their childhood and the older people can become kids again. The film compressed the gap and erected a bridge between the two hoods, the childhood and the adulthood.

"What is essential is invisible to the eye."

I did not know what to expect from it, but I highly satisfied with the final product. The film characters had no names, but called, the Little Girl, Mother, Fox, Rose, Snake, King et cetera as what their role is and species. Barely there are only 3-4 characters where the story was focused. Obviously it had a villain, but very unusual existence time and in a crucial part of the story.

I don't remember how the 100 minutes went so fast like a ray of the light beam flashed away. The pace of narration was not a rushy, except the opening part. But once the old man character, the Aviator, voiced by Jeff Bridge was introduced, the movie turned into completely different and awesome. Yes, Jeff Bridge's voice was so good for the background narration.

This story is about an old man who refused to grow up mentally and believes the existence of the magical stars and planets. The whole neighborhood stayed away from him and his troubles, until a new girl arrives at the next door. The little girl befriends him and falls for all his stories discarding her daily routines, but later it complicates their relationship after her mother finds out what they're up to. What happens to them and how the story concludes is the remaining part.

"She was not a common rose. She was the only one of her kind in the whole universe."

This story was finely fused between the reality and fantasy. Most essential storyline for the present world. In the name of education how the children were enforced by their parents to mechanical life with less time to play out and make their own friends. Especially as they were lacking the creativity to make up their own fictional worlds with their toys like the kids from a century ago were.

It might psychologically affect their characters while becoming an adult like the Aviator in this film, but as one of lines from the movie say 'Growing up is not the problem. Forgetting is', the children are losing their innocence over the adult's reality world. Who knows, someday those kids may become the greatest writer inspired by their childhood days.

If you ask me, I strongly recommend it for all. It is very encouraging film for the parents how not to raise their children and for the grown ups how not to get lost is the adult world. Most elegant flick of the year, along with a very few others.

You don't have to ignore it because you have read the book, like I said it was not completely borrowed from the original material. Instead, two-third of the film was freshly established out of the same name masterpiece. I'm not familiar with the book, so I've no thoughts that differentiate between these two formats. But definitely the film deserved all the appreciation from critics and movie

9½/10

Sorry. I grew up on the book and love it for so many reasons. Doing a "what would happen to the little prince later on?" I'm not feeling it.

Take a poetic masterpiece, add one scoop of Hollywood, a tablespoon of marketing and a pinch of focus groups and you get this schlock. Gross and sad.

Better off rereading the book and watching Coraline and Up. This is too slow and boring for kids and too simplistic and poorly thought out for adults. It's in no-man's land.

Grand deception - this movie makes France sad and Saint-Exupéry is rolling in his grave depressed that the evil characters of his story, jumped off the pages, got their nasty little hands all over it and ruined it in movie form.

In an age that is so saturated with social media and entertainment, I often forget when the last time was that I saw such a wholesome film as this. My heart is often overwhelmed at how quickly innocence and childhood is sucked away in our culture. I personally felt when I was young that innocence was to be looked down upon. As most encounter, the years couldn't go by fast enough for my young self, constantly wishing to be older and wiser. Now is the time I look back. I deeply appreciate this film because it cherishes the beauty of a child's imagination. The animation leaves me awestruck at its beautiful simplistic style of stop motion. I cannot help but by transported back into my ever too short childhood along with the little girl and the Prince. I hope more teenagers and adults will stumble upon this piece of art because it is such a good reminder to cherish our imaginations amidst our mundane every day life.

The movie opened today - 29 July 2015 - here in France, and I saw the second show here where I live, the small town of Paimpol. There were perhaps 30 people altogether in attendance. I could hear that the few children among them were bored. So, first comment: 1) This is not a movie for small children. It won't interest them.

2) If you are expecting a video reproduction of St Exupéry's story, you will be very disappointed. It's in this movie, but it only comprises a small part of it. Most of the movie is a frame for that tale, the story of a small girl who meets an elderly aviator who tells her, in bits and pieces, the story of his encounter, many years before, with the Little Prince. If you go expecting just what you know from St Exupéry's story, most of this movie will therefore be an annoyance to you.

It took me awhile to accept the frame story. It's fairly banal, fairly Hollywood. Nowhere near the originality of St. Exupéry's remarkable tale. But if you let yourself go with it, it has an appeal over time.

The part devoted to St. Exupéry's original tale is the best, as far as I'm concerned.

We also see the prince as an adult, very changed. That came as a shock at first to me, but again, I let myself go with it, and it had a certain fairly obvious interest.

This is not a great movie. "Ernest and Célestine" is a thousand times better. But it's worth seeing.

Again, however, this is NOT a movie for little children. They will be bored.