L'Enfant du mois de Kamiari

Meaningless movie.

What about her father?! And what about his grieve?

She's shown to be so rude to him.

At the end she didn't even understand the reason why her mother did that and way she need to do it.

She only did it because she likes to run!

I don't get it.

A cheap imitation of a Ghibli anime, this features all the typical clichés, but without eliciting any real emotion. You have the young spirited girl, the magical world she discovers, the strong emotions generated by her fridged mother, the cute companions, the important quest that for some reason depends on her efforts only and the dark villain. But at almost any level the main character is unsympathetic, her friends are pointlessly obtuse and without any credible reasoning for their actions, the villain is a shapeless blob that does absolutely nothing than lurk around and the quest is mired in feudal godly bureaucracy and small island mythology.

Bottom line: remove the fake Miyazaki veneer and all you have is a unlikeable girl running around because she enjoys it, but can't get herself to admit it because her mother died.

The fantastical elements of 'Child Of Kamiari Month (2021)' don't come into play for quite a while and the flick includes no hint of them prior to their inclusion. When the plot takes a turn for the otherworldly, it just unloads a tidal wave of exhausting exposition on you and honestly feels like some sort of lesson. In fact, you may even mistake it as thinly veiled edutainment for a short while; it genuinely feels like something you'd show Japanese children if you wanted to educate them on the Gods. Thankfully, once its lesson is out of its system, it settles back into itself and returns to telling its narrative in a much more relaxed way. The picture isn't especially interesting even at its most assured, although it does feature a few enjoyable set-pieces and is visually pleasing in places. It kind of feels a little cheap overall, both in terms of its production and in terms of its narrative (its emotional underpinning feels rather forced). The flick's structure is also kind of strange in that it provides hints of an antagonist but only really makes that antagonist prevalent for a single scene near the 'all is lost' moment, completely robbing this element of all its potential power. Thankfully, the conflict of the story is mostly internal and mostly convincing. Despite its few fairly significant flaws (that exposition dump is honestly almost fatal), the film is ultimately a decent effort overall. It has some charm to it and is entertaining enough for what it is. It isn't great and it isn't memorable (at all), but I'd consider it a decent animated adventure. 5/10.

8/10 Solid. To the team who out this together - thank you! Great story. Heart-warming, original, beautiful in multiple ways, I highly recommend this! The mere idea of a story focussed on running while time stops is wonderful!

The main story of the movie was confusing. It danced around what seems to be the point of the movie - mourning, loss, & grief. Instead of getting into the details of the main character's grief and sense of loss, the movie makes her seem like an ungrateful spoiled brat. She was so irritating that my children were scolding her for her behavior!

What's more, the movie was littered with plot armor that made even my children lose respect for the story. Halfway through the film they were treating it like a Ghibli Spoof film and making jokes.

To summarize, I feel that this film's premise was solid but the execution left a great deal to be desired.