The Little Prince

2016 "Growing up isn't the problem... forgetting is."
7.7| 1h48m| PG| en| More Info
Released: 05 August 2016 Released
Producted By: Canal+
Country: France
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

Based on the best-seller book 'The Little Prince', the movie tells the story of a little girl that lives with resignation in a world where efficiency and work are the only dogmas. Everything will change when accidentally she discovers her neighbor that will tell her about the story of the Little Prince that he once met.

... View More
Stream Online

Stream with Prime Video

Director

Producted By

Canal+

Trailers & Images

Reviews

bellasings-47917 I put off watching this movie for a long while because I grew up reading the book. The Little Prince is my favorite book & I was terrified it would be terrible, but I am so glad I was wrong. This film is heartwarming & brings to life all of the charm the book has. The animation style is perfect & captures the characters beautifully. There are a few nitpicky things I didn't enjoy as much, but it did the book so much justice. If you haven't read The Little Prince, please do! It's short & lovely & a real classic. But if you are not a reader, this movie encapsulates the intellect & message of the book in the best way possible. If you, like me, are concerned about watching this film because you love the book, give it a watch. I guarantee it will not disappoint you.
Animated Antic Have you ever heard of the animated film "Ernest & Celestine"? You probably haven't and that's because it didn't receive a wide release. The film was made in France, starred the fine young actress Mackenzie Foy along with Forrest Whitaker, and focused on the friendship between a mouse named Celestine and a bear named Ernest. I loved the film from beginning to end and it was certainly a sweet animated movie. The reason I say this is because "The Little Prince" is another animated movie that is pretty similar. It was made in France, also starred Mackenzie Foy, focused on a friendship, and didn't get a wide release with the film being released on Netflix in the United States. When I saw that the film was selected for completion at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 and critics praising the film calling it a beautiful masterpiece, I got interested. I watched the movie after the film was released to Netflix and I'm sad to say that I didn't really enjoy the movie because I couldn't get into this film.  I'll try to explain why because honestly it was really hard to follow this film.The film focuses on a young girl played by Mackenzie Foy. Her mother (Rachel McAdams) is trying to get her into this big academy and decides to prep her throughout the entire summer with a giant schedule telling her to read the schoolbooks and doing complex work. However, an old aviator (Jeff Bridges) gets her distracted and tells her stories about a young boy called The Little Prince (Riley Osborne) and how the aviator met him after crash landing in the Sahara Dessert . The girl then skips doing her daily assignments and goes to the old aviator every day and continues listening to the story about the Little Prince, not telling her mother.From what I just said, it doesn't sound bad at all, but trust me when I say the story is definitely the worst part about this movie.  Having never read the book it was based only by Antoine de Saint- Exupéry, I judged the film on it's own and honestly it started off decently, but then I got confused with the sections about The Little Prince and then about a third though the movie, I was totally lost. The movie just went spiraling out of control with no focus whatsoever and when the film ended I was left so baffled and confused. The characters didn't really leave much of an impact on me either. They're a couple of reasons for this. One is that they have no names. I mean none whatsoever. The movie just credits them as "The Aviator", "The Mother", or "The Little Girl" and that did get me a little frustrated because I find it lazy when a movie doesn't give characters names. The second problem with them is that, I didn't feel they had a clear personality. I mean, some I could understand like The Mother and The Little Girl, but characters like The Aviator and especially The Little Prince had very little to no personalities. As for the animation, I'm pretty split about. The stop motion elements of the movie I think are beautiful. It may not be as good as "Kubo and the Two Strings", but I thought it was pretty well done. They have a paper like feel to them and I definitely could see the craft in them. The computer animation parts, however, seemed amateur to me. I felt like they were done by an animation student and not by professionals which is a problem when you get down to it. I also really hated the cinematography in the film. Most of the shots were straight and didn't have tilts or were shot in different angles, they were just straight and that kind of became irritating  after a while. Now I will give the movie credit on this though. The voice acting is outstanding. I thought the characters were well casted and performed and they definitely brought something to the characters, but not a lot."The Little Prince" was just a confused mess. I could see something trying to get out of this film, but the story was just to confusing for me to grasp. I really was not impressed, which is a shame as I could see that this film really did try. However, I thought this film was trying to be a nice and sweet animated movie and it failed to accomplish. If you want much better animated movies that are nice and sweet, might I suggest watching the aforementioned"Ernest & Celestine" or even the director's previous work "Kung Fu Panda". Those movies had much more joy and balance than this film ever did, and besides they both got Oscar nominations anyway.
Wizard-8 As you may have heard, Paramount Pictures was all set to give this French animated movie a wide release in America, but at the last minute they cancelled its release, and to date they have never given a reason why. While I was watching the movie, several theories came to my mind. It might have been Paramount thought the movie was too "foreign" for American audiences. It might have been that the movie is significantly more serious and thoughtful than your typical Hollywood animated movie instead of having heavy slapstick and flatulence jokes.But I think the real reason was the main objection I had with the movie, that being that the filmmakers put way too much on their plate. Certainly, some of the movie is devoted to recreating the famous book of the same name. Bu the movie also spends a lot of time on the story about a little girl and her friendship with the elderly man living next door. In the last third of the movie, the story changes to being a sequel to the book. The movie can't decide on what it's supposed to be about, and as a result the plot is kind of a mess - especially if you haven't read the book.The movie certainly has fine animation (both computer and stop- motion) despite not having a Hollywood budget. And there is some charm here and there. But the story goes in way too many directions. The end results would probably have been better had the filmmakers picked one story and stuck to it.
rolfesam The Little Prince is one of those films you love to watch just for the sake of seeing what so many people poured themselves into. The movie plays out in three parts, the real world that is portrayed by CGI animation that, while beautiful, doesn't hold a candle to the incredible stop motion of the story world. The third part of the story is where the two eventually overlap, which offers some amazing moments of visual poetry. The stop motion portion of the movie is by far my favorite part of the film. The way it is animated makes me think much less of more modern masterpieces of the genre like Caroline and ParaNorman and more like paper mache works of short movies from a long time ago. It has so much heart and charm that these sections give of would make a fantastic masterpiece in of itself. Now that we've covered the animation it would remiss of me not to mention the voice performances in the film. To be exact I would like to talk about the real stand out of the movie is Jeff Bridges performance as the old man neighbor, this is one of my favorite from the actor, even with the inclusion of his past roles in the Big Lebowski and True Grit. I fully recommend this film to anyone with a Netflix subscription to watch it as it is short and sweet. The only real thing that works against the film is that you can only get it if you have a Netflix streaming subscription.