The Little Prince

Once upon a time there was little prince who lived on a planet that was scarcely bigger than himself.

~ The Little Girl

quick fox: B+ | Copper 

---

winding dragon

From director Mark Osborne (Kung Fu Panda) comes an adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s beloved novella, The Little Prince (1943). The film version (2015) takes some liberties, placing the novella’s plotline within a new framework following the adventure of the Little Girl. The Little Girl is trapped inside a clockwork adult world that values robot-like intelligence devoid of imagination, but all of that changes when her elderly neighbor, the Aviator, tells her the tale of the Little Prince “who lived on a planet that was scarcely bigger than himself.” 

The Little Prince is divided into three parts: the computer animated world with the Little Girl, the stop-motion world of the Little Prince, and the last third of the movie when both worlds collide. All three parts, unfortunately, lean on tropes to further relationships or plot. A few off the top of my head include: Dissatisfaction with how life is planned out, useless parents, eccentric wise old man, animal sidekick, magic/fantasy interpreted as either real/imagined—all these elements from reminded me heavily of other animated productions like Whispers of the Heart (1995), The Polar Express (2004), or Coraline (2009),

However, what separates The Little Prince from other animated films is the breathtaking artwork. I believe every great animated film has that one moment of genius artistic expression that people point to as what makes that movie iconic, such as the furnace in Toy Story 3 or the first test flight from How To Train Your Dragon. The Little Prince, though, has multiple moments—whenever the story follows the Little Prince in his travels, it’s absolutely mesmerizing. The production used stop-motion animation for these sequences, and all the characters were made out of thin, practically see-through paper. It’s hard to describe, but moments like the Little Prince standing in the desert while the wind lightly waves his scarf or the Fox’s tail dancing along the grass are some of my favorite moments using stop-motion.

Is The Little Prince flawless? Heavens no. Sometimes the dialogue tries too hard to match the artistry of what is being seen and just comes off sounding cheesy. Sometimes the workings of both worlds (which are never explained) don’t make sense even for a fantasy/futuristic universe. But the emotions that I took away from it once the credits rolled were absolutely perfect. It’s poignant and bittersweet, tender without being softhearted, a film that is impossible to forget.