A Little Girl (Mackenzie Foy), is being prepared by her mother (Rachel McAdams) for the very grown-up world only to be interrupted by her eccentric, kind-hearted neighbor, The Aviator (Jeff Bridges). The Aviator introduces her to an extraordinary world where anything is possible. A world that he himself was initiated into long ago by The Little Prince (Riley Osborne). It’s here that The Little Girl’s magical and emotional journey into her own imagination and into the universe of The Little Prince begins. And it’s where The Little Girl rediscovers her childhood and learns that ultimately, it’s human connections that matter most, and that what’s truly essential can only be seen with the heart.
As with most films based on books, I haven’t read the book before seeing the film and this is still the case with this one. I will say that I’ve never heard of the story in which the film is based. I saw a trailer a few times and my interest came from the animation style which I haven’t often seen featuring a combination of computer-generated animation along with some stop motion animation.
The story here is about a Little Girl (Foy) (there are no names here) who is being prepared by her mother (McAdams) for a grown-up world. This doesn’t exactly work out when this is interrupted by her neighbor, The Aviator (Bridges). He then introduces her to an extraordinary world where he was initiated by The Little Prince (Osborne).
The impression that I got from the film was that it was trying to contrast the story of The Little Prince, which uses the stop motion animation, with that of the Little Girl and The Aviator. The Little Girl was being pushed by her mother into becoming more of a grown-up and The Aviator came along to remind her of her childhood. She gets to be a child when she gets to the experience the story of The Little Prince, told by The Aviator along with his drawings. The film goes back and forth between both stories with the Little Girl re-embracing her childhood along with The Little Prince doing whatever he was doing. Maybe this was where not reading the book hurt me the most as I did not really understand what was going on so I couldn’t relate to the message that I’m sure was probably trying to convey.
Because I didn’t really understand what was going on, I found myself not caring about The Little Prince side of the story. What also took me out of that part was the dialogue as it just seemed weird to me. Maybe it was like that in the book but again, I haven’t read it. I found the relationship between The Little Girl and The Aviator more compelling. I just believed in their relationship a lot more as I related more to it. Maybe it was just because I happen to love Bridges. I just found him to be the perfect person to voice The Aviator. He wasn’t the only famous person here as Paul Rudd (Mr. Prince), James Franco (The Fox), and Ricky Gervais (The Conceited Man) just to name a few also appear in supporting roles.
It wasn’t all bad here as I found the animation to be very well done here with the combination of computer-generated and stop motion animation. This is a children’s film but I don’t think this will be for everyone as I did find myself bored at times and I think others will too.
Overall, this is a decent animated film with nice animation but I did not get its message. I did not read the book and I believe it hurt me here so I would definitely recommend reading it first. It probably would have been better if I did that but I didn’t and I have to rate it based on that.
Score: 6/10
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.
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