Rectangular_businessman "Mia and the Migoo" is a charming and whimsical tale, that manages to avoid most of the clichés that commonly appear in this kind of stories.Basically, "Mia and the Migoo" is an ecological fable, that takes many elements present in the movies made by Hayao Miyazaki: A brave, yet calm heroine who is able to feel many things that others ignore; strange beings of ambiguous appearances and personality; the subtle treatment of themes such as the relationship of man and nature, and the family relationships as well...Of course, the final result is not at same level of complexity and beauty of the works of Hayao Miyazaki (Despite having many common elements and themes)However, even when this is not a masterpiece at same level of the productions of the Studio Ghibli, it is still pretty good, with a beautiful animation, charming and interesting scenes and good development of the story and the characters.My only complaint about "Mia and the Migoo" is that the ending feels somewhat rushed in comparison with the rest of the film...But despite that, I still enjoyed a lot this movie and I would recommend it to anyone.

dbborroughs Mia's dad is working on a cursed construction project in a haunted forest. Sensing something happened to him she heads off alone to see him. Along the way she meets a variety of weird and wonderful people, and the Migoo, a group of forest "spirits" tasked with guarding a tree at the heart of the world.This is a beautifully animated film seems to be a painting come to life. Its a visually rich and magical film to look at, producing repeated whispers of "Oh Wow" in the audience. Its truly a film with a look all its own.Unfortunately the story, which is magical and enchanting for just over two thirds of its running time kind of goes off the rails in the final third as the eco message at the heart of the story is sledgehammered home and the too many plot threads and characters are found to be going nowhere.Don't get me wrong I really liked most of this film, I just didn't like the sudden turn to into a sermon. The film was doing fine until it started to get preachy. (I won't get into the ending which is more a stopping rather than a conclusion since it leaves so much just hanging) Worth a look if you get a chance, but I'd wait for DVD.

awh38 Mia, a little girl living in a dying village decides to go and see her father Pedro, working miles away on a construction site. This site has seen a number of weird sabotage events. Pedro, trying to investigate, disappears in a tunnel collapse. Mia will have to brave many obstacles to reach her destination. This beautiful animation film will stay in my mind for a long time. It is an ode to nature and the responsibility of our generation and our children's. The starting scene with the Tree is breathtaking at the cinema. You quickly forget the crudeness of the drawings and get sucked into the story through the warm voices and music. In my opinion, children from 3 years old can see it but adults should be the ones to really listen to the messages. If you've seen the French film 'Les Ch'tis' you will recognise in the character Le Migou, the French accent from Northern France. Enjoy!

info-13032 I saw this film at the world premiere at the Festival d'Annecy 2008, in Annecy, France. The designs were charmingly old school and the movie seemed cute.Unfortunately, it's really badly written. The story, although it's for kids and revolves around a very classical them (mean greedy corporate suit destroys nature for money but little innocent girl meets magical beings and fights with only her innocence), is treated way too naively.Although the characters have clear goals, the story is really badly structured and the overall pace of the film is boring. The fact that the dialogue are extremely poor only makes it worse. They're awkward, sound awfully unnatural, are way too long and inefficient for conveying the needed information to the audience.So bad story, badly structured, served by bad dialogues. But the actors suck quite a bit too. I saw the movie in its original french version (my mother tongue), and the actors just sound awful and lack believability and every single one of their lines (the fact that they've been given amateur lines in the first place must not help).All of the above plus a million other details make a movie that just simply DOESN'T work. Every person I spoke to after the screening (many of them animation professionals) said they just couldn't get to care about the characters and that none of the emotion worked in the film. Nobody felt sad when something sad happened, nobody felt any kind of tension during the scenes where there was supposed to be some, the climax didn't work at all, etc.I'm here judging the film on its "film" qualities (writting, directing, acting), not on the technical side of things. But as a side note: the animation sucked balls, too. A few characters are cute, but the Migou (the strange creature) just look awkward and have an annoying personality.What was very promising seems just like the poor man's My Neighbour Totoro.It still bends my mind that it takes so long (6 years) to mount and produce such a film. The animation industry seems like a crazy place that needs to refine its financing channels...