लीफ़ी, ए हेन इन द वाइल्ड

Anyone who ever had, or ever was a loving mother owes it to him or herself to watch this masterpiece of Korean animation.

This is definitely one of the most touching, poignant movie I've ever had the pleasure to see. It will hit straight into your heart and awoken feelings you forgot you could experience.

Everything from the vibrant art style, flawless animation, well structured narrative, good balance of humor and drama and brilliantly orchestrated score brings this movie to a state of perfection few other animated features have achieved before.

Little warning to parents: Leafie deals with some pretty heavy stuff. I mean, you should definitely go watch it with your older kids, but the younger ones should probably sit this one out. It was, after all, based on a book for preteens and contains scenes of violence (don't worry, nothing too graphic, and this is definitely NOT one of those hyper-violent mindless summer blockbuster) and some heavy emotional investment that might not be suitable to younger audiences.

In brief: I recommend Leafie heartily to everyone, it's a definitive must-watch, but be ready to cry a river.

The first 10 minutes dubbed was ridiculous compared to the first 10 minutes of subbed. I recommend watching the original Korean language with subtitles.

The movie was serious and good up until the strange otter character decided to show up. Things just get stupid after that.

This movie is very didactic, but it is not for toddlers. They show you that you can love someone even though you are very different. It shows you that bad things do happen in life, not like Hollywood movies where everything is "pink". The music is excellent too!. Excellent movie!!!!! I love Leafie, and of course, Greenie. And his dad! And the funny sea otter, and the frogs, and the bat.... all the characters were great.

I put this on for my not-quite-3-year-old son.

Within the first five minutes, it features:

• The horrors of industrial chicken farming, including filth, depressed chickens, and mass death of chickens.
• A wheelbarrow of corpses (of chickens), with the protagonist tossed on top.
• A mass grave (of chickens).
• A homcidal animal attack (which, okay, animal stories always have these).
• A physically and verbally abusive patriarchal male figure (a rooster) attacking the protagonist... and then, when she stands up to him, he beats her down again and her resistance effectively achieves nothing but more abuse.

I am not a believer that kids' entertainment needs to sanitize out all the ugliness in the world, but... neither does it need to be this nasty. But that's the first five minutes. It's less brutal later on, mostly, and there are nice moments. Unfortunately, that's not the end of the cartoon's problems.

The other big problem is the plot arc: it's arguably sexist to have a protagonist whose primary character development is, "She becomes heroic by learning to make the sacrifices involved in being a good mother." When you're aware of the social setting in which this film was made-where lots and lots of women are similarly consigned to defining themselves primarily as mothers, to the point where they're even called "_______'s mom" instead of their own names, there's something a little off-putting about it.

Not that there's anything wrong with parenthood being valorized: it is a heroic act in many ways, at least when done right. But when's the last time you saw cartoon about a male animal being heroic by making the private, quiet sacrifices of being a good dad? Not even in this film do we see male characters making comparable sacrificing in the name of fatherhood, which... well, it's kind of hard not to notice. (It's also hard not to notice the duckling she adopts is a male character: heaven forbid a female character sacrifice and struggle to parent a *female* child.)

In sum, the cartoon struck me as heavy-handed, tin-eared, and sexist.

This adorable but very singular Leafie broke my heart many times, and I absolutely adored Greenie. All the characters are so well presented, I watched this movie in the original language, of course, and also in Spanish and in english. Korean was my favorite. I loved this movie!