Review of The Little Prince (2015) by Cam B — 05 Aug 2016

I have been looking forward to this movie for so long. I teared up during the trailer. I called Paramount idiots for pulling the plug so close to release. Now I see why. I can only imagine what the test audiences had to say about it as they left those theaters. How it's getting such good reviews now I have no idea. I almost feel like everyone on the internet watched a different movie than me. This is among the worst films I've ever seen, and I haven't seen a kids film miss the point of its source material this badly since The Lorax. I want to be painfully clear, the only reason I gave this two stars instead of one is that the parts that actually DO deal with the Little Prince's actual story are gorgeous, touching, visually interesting, and wonderful. If you want my advice? Wait a couple of weeks for someone to cut those together on youtube and just watch that.

So, obviously, I'm going to have a lot of bad things to say about this film, but I do want to talk about the good first, because there WERE a couple of good things to be noted. As the film started, I found myself really wishing I could have seen it in 3D as it seemed to be really built for it and animated with 3D in mind. That being said, that feeling vanished fairly quickly. After the initial sequence, there isn't much that I can recall that would have been really stunning in 3D. Perhaps some of the end scenes with the stars, but I think that might be it.

Also, as I said above, the parts that tell the Little Prince's actual story are wonderful. I loved the animation style. It was risky and interesting and really felt like it kept the overall feel of those original drawings in the story. I also really liked that whenever she was reading the pages, they were in French. It was a small detail that I'm not sure people would catch if they weren't looking for it. It gave me hope that this film really respected the original story and was going to do it right.

I was incredibly wrong.

For starters...this is a heavy handed anti-conformity film. It beats the audience over the head with it. Literally. We start with our main character literally fainting from the pressure while applying for a school that literally puts up posters in its waiting room showing identical images of unsmiling children labelled "essential." They then move into a perfectly gridded, square neighborhood, where the houses are square and gray. Even the hedges and plants are all trimmed into squares. But...OF COURSE...the cooky, anti conformity old man living in his crazy house on the end of the block, shunned by all, is the one who will show our young, growing up too fast little girl how to be a kid.

At its heart I do think they were trying to give a good message with this. He tells her repeatedly that growing up isn't the problem. It's forgetting. And I think that's a good thing for kids to hear. But it's so buried under all this other imager that the subtle message is completely lost. And then, in the climax, when it's being shoved down our throats, it's done with so little respect for the Little Prince that I found myself actively angry at the film, to the point where I could think of little else.

And that, in my opinion, is the film's biggest failing. Large sections of the Little Prince's original story, with that beautiful animation, were glossed over, or seemingly edited out all together, to make more time for this message. The final half hour or so of the film is one extended dream sequence that I GUESS is supposed to have an ambiguous feel to it, but never really did. And in that dream? I hardly know how to put my outrage into words. Aside from being boring as a story and boring to look at, it was just plain insulting to the original text. The original Little Prince story is left with an ambiguous ending. Did the Prince die? Did he go home to his rose? It's supposed to be a hopeful note, to lead the readers to believe, to take it on faith that yes, he could have gotten back to her. The Aviator himself sums up the general feeling when explaining it to the little girl, hinting at an allegorical connection between the story and his own death, which seems to be drawing nearer. It's a very touching moment, one of the film's only ones, in fact.

And then we have this dream sequence. Where the little girl goes to find the Little Prince because she thinks he can somehow save the Aviator from dying. And find him she does, as an adult. Who has had and been fired from 370 different jobs. Who is a ball of anxiety and all too modern mannerisms. There is nothing timeless about him, the way he is in glimpses of his story from the rest of the film. We might as well call him the Onceler and set up a thousand tumblr blogs for him. He's forgotten everything about his own story, only to be reminded, slowly by the little girl. She takes him back to his asteroid, to his rose, who is, I kid you not, fucking dead. She blows away as dust and the girl leaves him on that asteroid and we're supposed to feel good about this? Hopeful? If this is supposed to be a story to teach children about death, did it really need to show us the dead body of a character that we've spent most of the film hoping the Little Prince could get back to, even undermining the films OWN MESSAGE when the Aviator told her he had faith that the Prince got back to his rose?

And that's it. That's where it ends. She goes back to visit the Aviator in the hospital, and roll credits.

I am so angry at this film. So. Very. Angry. Everything that was timeless and charming about this story has been painted over by this cookie cutter anti-conformity story and this strange, depressing, all things die outlook. It is not hopeful. It is not inspiring. It is not original. It is not even pretty to look at. The ONLY thing this film has going for it, again, are those few moments of the original book. Do not waste your time. Do not subject your kids to this. Hand them the original book and tell them to go to town because this? Is not that story. Not even close.