O Pequeno Príncipe

The movie opened today - 29 July 2015 - here in France, and I saw the second show here where I live, the small town of Paimpol. There were perhaps 30 people altogether in attendance. I could hear that the few children among them were bored. So, first comment: 1) This is not a movie for small children. It won't interest them.

2) If you are expecting a video reproduction of St Exupéry's story, you will be very disappointed. It's in this movie, but it only comprises a small part of it. Most of the movie is a frame for that tale, the story of a small girl who meets an elderly aviator who tells her, in bits and pieces, the story of his encounter, many years before, with the Little Prince. If you go expecting just what you know from St Exupéry's story, most of this movie will therefore be an annoyance to you.

It took me awhile to accept the frame story. It's fairly banal, fairly Hollywood. Nowhere near the originality of St. Exupéry's remarkable tale. But if you let yourself go with it, it has an appeal over time.

The part devoted to St. Exupéry's original tale is the best, as far as I'm concerned.

We also see the prince as an adult, very changed. That came as a shock at first to me, but again, I let myself go with it, and it had a certain fairly obvious interest.

This is not a great movie. "Ernest and Célestine" is a thousand times better. But it's worth seeing.

Again, however, this is NOT a movie for little children. They will be bored.

Animation is under-estimated, perhaps because we tend to be afraid of what we do not understand.

I have seen a lot of films, done a lot of reviews and thought I had seen it all.

I was wrong.

First, I had not read the book prior to seeing this film nor had I seen the earlier screen version.

No matter. I was transfixed and stunned. I was still sitting there when the final credits rolled, which is really a feat because the credits roll for 10 minutes after the word FIN (THE END) rolls. (If you miss the credits, you miss the TURN AROUND song which itself could be highlight of one of the most incredible music scores in one of the most incredible movies ever).

When computers were first being married to animation -- a marriage made in heaven I think -- I recall an interview with a senior animator who confided that when the day came that they could get the "eyes" right, they would have reached the pinnacle of their craft.

That day has arrived. This movie is the herald.

Watching the eyes in this film, I felt as though I was watching real people. Does that make me sound daft? I hope not. There is one scene where the little girl watches the Aviator go to the hospital in the rain. She is at the same time transfixed with sadness and soaking wet. The animation made both conditions "real" at the same time. I don't know how. But it did.

Jeff Bridges, a brilliant actor with a record longer than your arm, gives the "voice" performance of his career here, and Rachael McAdams, former Femme Fatale, former "against type" actress (TRUE DETECTIVE) ditto.

Running out of superlatives, something I seldom do, so I will stop here.

See it. Don't argue. Just see it.

I could predict the movie ending by the first few minutes or so and I told my wife "okay, let's see if it can still be entertaining on the details...". Oh boy, I may never been so glad to be so wrong. I mean, of course I was hoping for it to be good, but I was expecting very, very little of it. Most animations I've been watching in the past 2 years or so, including Pixar's, have not being able to move me at all. At all. And IMDb score was just below what I'd expect from a good one.

( Okay, Inside Out was an exception: great and cute. Maybe my hopes for that one were too high but I was hoping for a better neural representation there, and it had some weak science behind it ( don't take my or Steve Novella's word for it, do your homework ). I would argue it is even harmful, because it will certainly create new bad myths about the mind and the brain. )

Anyway, Little Prince at least isn't about science - because else they'd get it wrong at very least on the lucid dreaming there... But it's perfectly done. Perfectly. Every little detail. Right near the beginning the girl gets a new friend and starts to wonder how his stories could be possible. While she is thinking, the wind in the background is moving engines. That's art. And science, even if only subconsciously. Even if.

The symbolism there is exquisite. I have watched a few french movies, I do know a little about the culture there, I've toured through France more than any other European country in my 2013 tour... I haven't seen anything like this before. Maybe I will need to take my french classes back again, eventually.

Here, let me tell you about 2 math formulas that appear in there (not the only ones, the first book she does open is about math, probably algebra, but in french sorry), for a few seconds: first one is about analytical geometry, and got an Escher picture in it. Now, in Brazil we don't learn any of that in school, not even Calculus, but I've gone to first year of Statistics and 1 got semester of Math in there... That shoot is complex! The only thing I can say about the first picture is she got a great compressed writing and thinking there. This to me means more than anything that whoever wrote the script (I haven't read the book) was an avid math enthusiast (like myself) at very least.

On the second one, however, she gets on to some Calculus, which to me was one of the funnest parts in school (after geometry, and I didn't really enjoy Math in college). Math was always my favorite topic in school. And that's a "simple" 3rd degree expression. All I can say is it's not being properly resolved, at first sight. But I bet there's a meaning there I just can't see yet. This is how this movie was made. Filled with tiny little details at every single second.

I'm very good at Math and at counting, but I can't even understand what the 6 year old is doing in her book there and those are images that just don't matter to the plot or for anything else, really. They're there on their own!

I'll make a real bold guess here, but I think this have became instantly my favorite film of all times. On top of Forrest Gump, Matrix, any Pixar's, Bedazzled, Terry Gilliam's, Huckabees, Stranger than Fiction, BttF, 2001, Interstellar, The Martian (still unwatched), Terminator you name it. I know almost nobody would agree with me here, but that's just how I felt having just watched the movie less than 8 hours ago.

It touched me deeply, and it did so by touching both my heart and brains, like no other one ever did. 34 year old, happily married, with no kids due to life issues, no job and lots of work to do. Specially after being this inspired. =)

-- Caue

There is one thing you have to know before even read about this movie, and it isn't the summary: There is already a LOT of things telling the same old story of the book. How the pilot and the prince became friends, all the adventures and beyond, in other animations and endless other media. This movie isn't about those two characters only. It's about how this story can touch people since it was created, from toddlers to grandpas, in different ways and in different ages. I've seen people say out loud "this is not little prince!", but I say "yes, it is!". Want to see a pure version? Read the book. The animation and the characters are rich and lovely, the CG and the stop motion are perfect and well used. Everything is heartwarming. If you don't know the book, you'll read it after seeing this. If you do, I'm sure you'll cry a lot. And at the end of the movie you'll want a fox for you too.

It was so long ago that this furred creature talked of life and other miraculous things hoisted up by far fetched maturity and sensibility presumably alien for a being draped in fur, but it resonates louder and makes even more sense now, when after all this years I re-read the novella that was first published in 1943 after the outbreak of second WW, by French writer and artist Antoine De- Saint Exupery, The Little Prince. It makes me wonder if it ever were a children's tale, but again to decode such an honest, sincerely beautiful written work of art, a child's innocence and naivety is the only play. Such stories don't need working out you feel the characters as they evolve through the pages and identify with you. 2015 is about to see in a re-imagined spirit the animated adaptation of Exupery's invention, from Kung- Fu Panda director Mark Osborne of the same name. It is majorly awaited. The trailer was irresistibly delicious instilling a magic like atmosphere with the equally enchanting background score by Richard Harvey and Hans Zimmer. This movie got an amazing cast from Bridges to Cottilard, it will be dream on screen. The little girl's imagination of the Prince and the fox is done by stop motion animation resembling and staying true to those old painted images. Remember the dewy water color illustrations by Exupery depicting the Prince on the asteroid, the magical rose that grew on it…with flaxen hair and a scarf he just looked like a cherry boy who lost his way. Walking through the sands, if you please I would draw you a sheep.