Le voyage de Ricky

When his family makes their annual migration, a young sparrow has to travel alongside them. To do this he will have to count on an owl with her imaginary friend, and a parakeet who is a fan of disco music. Along the way he will encounter everything from evil bats to a jumbo jet.

The film is a very beautiful work; the film gives the viewer messages of perseverance, effort and courage.

The characters are very lovable, friendly and well thought out. Highly recommended for the whole family, plus you will want to see it again and again, although it does not comes to surpass the Disney and Dreamworks classics.

"Richard The Stroke" was a really fun family movie to watch. I must confess I had never heard anything about it before today and I thought it was a Dreamworks or Pixar movie that was kept at a low profile. It's an European movie (German/Belgian) and I admit me and my kids had our doubts about it but as the movie progresses our doubts became completely unfounded because "Richard The Stork" was really, really entertaining. It has a slight darker edge than typical Dreamworks or Pixar fare and the story is a bit in the lines of "Finding Nemo", so if you enjoyed that one you will definitely enjoy this one too.

Richard is an orphan sparrow who is found by Aurora, a lovely stork who becomes his stepmother. The pigeon grows believing his just a "short" stork, but his stepdad, Claudius, is reluctant in having him as his stepson, arguing that sparrows don't migrate and when the time comes to do so it will ultimately kill little Richard. When fall sets in, Aurora, Claudius and Max (Richard's stork brother) leave the small pigeon behind and fly off to Africa, although Aurora and Max are reluctant but ultimately obey Claudius orders. Upon waking up, Richard is all alone in the stork nest and the rest of the movie is his story in going out to look for his stork family.

"Richard The Stork" has a lot of funny and heartfelt moments and this European kids movie does try to emulate to some extent the storytelling style of Dreamworks or Pixar movies but adds its own along the way. Grown ups and kids will surely love it, my family enjoyed it wholeheartedly!

This is the first full length animated Movie made namely in Luxembourg which I could view in Luxembourgish. The story is rather simple but the animations are world class and the dialogs, at least in Luxembourgish, are funny, namely because they are playing nicely with the particularities of the language. I hope the translations are just as good. The movie includes also a few nice novel ideas, namely on how birds use the social media (not a spoiler: watch it to discover how). I really liked watching the movie and my kids (4 and 7) adored it. It is a movie for the whole family not to be missed.

Although there are segments of animation that look pretty good, like land and water, it's clear they were not from the same animation house that did the storks. The overall animation is of the level of 20-25 years ago with limited use of camera techniques used in CGI films in the last few years. With most of the characters blend with the surroundings.

The story is sadly overdone and completely underwhelming. The sparrow that thinks he's a stork and a stork flock that doesn't share nearly enough screne time to believe or have emotional buy-in to the conflict that is supposed to be there.

Poor writing on top of that. Conscious animals don't know what a train is but are aware of puns, city names, and more.

That said, if you imagination only needs to be at a 6-year-old level, go for it.

What a cute and sad drawing, the pobi already loses his family in the beginning and then the adoptive family abandons him without mercy, sad, he gets a little lighter with the comical side when the little owl and the other little bird enter.... The graphic it's beautiful, but the strong point of the film is the story, a perfect script development, in a mix of heavy drama involved by a light comic vein, in addition to the captivating characters...