Cannes 2015: The Little Prince Review - Deep Animation With A Flat Plot

Rating: ˜…˜…˜… It's impossible to not compare The Little Prince to Inside Out. Both premiered Out of Competition at Cannes and, in something that's become a festival theme, both are about memories, with direct focus on the transition from childhood to adulthood. And so while The Little Prince is a well-intentioned, sometimes touching, always beautiful animated treat, it can't help but be the weaker film in comparison to Pixar's festival appearance. Based on the French children's book about love and life, told through the abstract meeting of a small boy and a crashed pilot in the desert, Mark Osborne has made one of the most out-there animated films to get a wider release in years. It's a better, more measured film than his previous Kung Fu Panda (which you have to hope he only did to get to make this clear passion project), but by the end credits still feels a bit distant. As any still will show, it looks gorgeous. Starting with hand-drawn animation before making way for traditional digimation. The CGI is a mix of Pixar's wide-eyed humans and the more stylised version you expect from France, but it's the rest of the show that's mind-blowing; as the story moves on you're treated to excellent model work and one cardboard cutout sequence that simply boggles. The film uses its different techniques to comment on memory, periods of life and the changing world (in a sense broader than just the world of animation) without ever letting their standalone beauty be lessened. And then there's the voice actors. The English language version includes (deep breath) Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, Paul Rudd, Marion Cotillard, James Franco, Benicio Del Toro, Ricky Gervais, Paul Giamatti, Albert Brooks, Bud Cort and Mackenzie Foy, and all of them (bar Gervais, who is a little obvious) perfectly fit the character without just playing themselves. This is probably the best voice cast assembled for a film ever, in terms of quality and delivery. For all that visual and audio spark, however, the film doesn't do much to stick with you. The off-kilter story of a planet-hopping Prince encountering a crashed pilot has a prominent, modern day storyline added to it that expands the narrative, but feels a little less eye-widening than what's lifted directly from the source. There's some nice moments, but they're hardly necessary and are probably only in there to boost the film's mainstream appeal. The big problem, and this is where the Inside Out comparison rears its head again, is that The Little Prince makes its key theme explicit in the early stages - we all grow up and will inevitably forget our childhood. It's a fitting moral given the rest of the festival, but is only ever explored on a surface level. Keep up with all of our Cannes 2015 coverage on the official page here.