Manou à l'école des goélands

It was nice to see a slow-moving but sweet and interesting topic from an unfamiliar animation studio, LUXX production (which is based in Germany, but apparently the original vocals are in English?). It managed to weave a lot of great information on birds into the plot without forcing it too much. And the French Riviera setting was beautiful, and entirely from the perspective of the birds - humans play only a very marginal role.

Sebastian's Review: 8 Stars Sienna's Rating: 7 Stars Paul's Rating: 7 Stars.

I really liked the movie and my kids love it. It is maybe not for older ones, but young children really enjoy it. And for me it was no waste of time, great design. I got a great feeling of the cote d'azure. The look is amazing and worth it alone.

What a terrible movie was that !!! Tried to watch it with my kids and we could not even finish it !!! We just gave up after 20-25 minutes !!! Terrible story horrible animation at this age !!! A terrible movie can not be saved by good actor voices !!! Do not waste your time !!!

Manou the Swift or Swift is an animated story about a swift named Manou (voiced by Josh Keaton) who is raised by seagulls and struggles to fit in. He then goes through a journey in discovering his true identity.

Swift benefits from a feel-good story as you can see the struggles of growing up and trying to identify with a group who you do not feel a part of. I enjoyed some of the relationships Manou had such as with his brother Luc (voiced by Mikey Kelly) and his love interest Khalifa (voiced by Cassandra Steen).

Where the film lacks is the animation and storyline. The storyline, while feel-good, does nothing to differentiate itself from other stories in the past. While I did enjoy it, I didn't feel like it wasn't something I had not seen before. Furthermore, aside from Manou learning his identity, there is no other major plot point. It feels a lot longer than it should be despite only being 90 minutes. In addition, this is a lower budget animated film and it does show. It feels like a made-for-tv animated film. I would rate this slightly under average - 4/10.

It is the French coast, Nice. Manou's egg ends up on the ground and cracked. He manages with his little wings to crawl up a rock and finds a nesting pair of Gulls. Mama Gull takes him under her wing, the pair end up raising this small Swift as if he were a Gull, along with his Gull brother that hatches shortly.

But he can never be a Gull, he can't soar, he eventually accepts his fate and acts like a Swift. His big moment comes when the migratory group encounter bad weather and he leads them to safety.

So, other than a cute cartoon it has a message of acceptance of those who are not like you. And that discarded individuals should not give up, there is a place for everyone if we find our real talents.

It was fun to watch but pretty innocuous. We watched it at home on DVD from our public library.