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.”
