Showing posts with label the little prince. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the little prince. Show all posts

Friday, December 18, 2015

The Little Prince

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DIRECTOR: Mark Osborne  LEAD CAST: Mackenzie Foy, Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, Paul Rudd, Marion Cotillard, James Franco, Benicio del Toro, Ricky Gervais  FILM EDITORS: Carole Kavetz Aykanian, Matt Landon  PRODUCERS: Demitri Rassam, Aton Soumache, Alexis Vonard  EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Jinko Gotoh, Mark Osborne, Moritz Borman, Thierry Pasquet, Paul Rassam  SCREENPLAY: Irena Brignull, Bob Persichetti  BASED ON: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery MUSIC: Richard Harvey, Hans Zimmer  GENRE: Animation, Fantasy  CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Kris Kappo, Adel Abada  PRODUCTION DESIGN: Lou Romano, Céline Desrumaux  PRODUCTION COMPANIES: Onyx Films, Orange Studio, On Animation Studios  DISTRIBUTORS: Paramount Pictures  COUNTRY: France  LANGUAGE: English RUNNING TIME: 108 minutes
Technical assessment: 4
Moral assessment: 3.5
CINEMA rating: VA (Viewers of all ages)
Instead of being a straight adaptation of Saint-Exupéry's novel with the same title, The Little Prince is about The Little Girl (voiced by Mackenzie Foy) whose mother (Rachel McAdams)—determined to raise her into “a wonderful grown-up”—maps out her life on a magnetic board detailing the girl’s activities with military precision.  Moving into a new neighborhood to get closer to the university of the mother’s dreams, mother and daughter notice the odd looking house right next to theirs.  Later on they discover that its inhabitant is just as odd—an eccentric old aviator (Jeff Bridges) who keeps a biplane in his backyard—but here begins a friendship between 9-year-old girl and the 90-year-old stranger who regales her with stories of a mysterious little prince he had met when his plane crashed in the desert.
The technical magic of The Little Prince lies in the film’s clever intertwining of the modern-day narrative of director Mark Osborne’s little girl creation and the multi-stranded story-telling of Saint-Exupery’s novel to come up with an ageless message that appeals to viewers of all ages.  Transitions between the two worlds—the little prince’s and the little girl’s—are rendered smoothly by using the lead character The Aviator as its narrator as well.  Through enchanting eye candy the teaching moments of a somewhat abstract classic novel are made palatable for a contemporary audience.  Remember what mothers used to do before the invention of candy-flavored aspirin for children?  They’d tuck the bitter pill in a slice of banana for a child’s effortless ingestion.  The Little Prince’s visuals are bite-sized banana slices containing metaphysical truths that even some adults would find hard to swallow.
Although armed with the best of intentions towards their children’s welfare, parents could sometimes overdo things to the extent of squelching the freedom and the right of the youngsters to be their own persons.  The mother does not realize that her attempts to make a “wonderful grown-up” out of her 9-year-old is threatening to smother the little girl’s sense of wonder.  The obsession with worldly success, power, acquisitions, and public image dehumanizes adults and imprisons them in a cell with no window to the stars.  We are not meant to be cut-and-dried entities walking the earth for the sole purpose of impressing society and pleasing ourselves.  The Little Prince challenges us to recognize the value of transcendence, reminds us that our identity is determined by our essence, and that “what is essential is invisible to the eye.”