After looking it up, I can recall hearing of this while in school but not much after that. Seems like its like The Alchemist in the sense that its one of the GOAT books.
Huh. I thought this was a French production, and I guess it still is, but I didn't know it was directed by the Kung Fu Panda guy with a ton of Hollywood celebrities voicing it. Jeff Bridges as the the older Aviator is pretty spot-on casting.
both styles clash horribly. While I'm glad TLP is getting a movie, a 2d animated one in the vein of The Illusionist would have been leagues better than this awful mishmash
There are two things going on here: one is the completely new framing story, which looks like a fairly generic but not terrible CGI animated film in the mode of Dreamworks or Pixar. The other is the adaptation of The Little Prince, done in a beautiful stop motion style.
These seem to be completely different and jarringly unconnected to each other. I will do my best to hold my judgment, but it's tough not to be critical here when the book itself is something that really doesn't need the embellishment. Antoine de St. Exupery, beloved aviator-author of WWII era France, was not only gifted at capturing the nature of flight in prose in his memoirs, but also wrote a book for children of simple yet uncommon wisdom which has endured in popularity in many different languages and places since it's original publication. It is really not the property I'd seek out if I were looking to make a standard feel good kids film, or whatever this is.
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.
You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.
So I watched this yesterday... on an airplane! It seems that the movie has been out long enough in certain countries (I live in America), that some airlines are already showing it.
I read the book when I was much younger, so I didn't remember too much, though the illustrations have stuck with me. That said, I was pleasantly surprised. The framework built around the original story works well enough, in that the characters are memorable, and it moves along at a good pace. Jeff Bridges kind of overdid it with his 'kooky old man' shtick, but I still cared enough about the characters. The Little Prince is a very abstract tale for a feature-length film, and I think the filmmakers did an impressive job of presenting the story in a way that's accessible to younger viewers. It's not perfect, but the story can be interpreted in a multitude of ways; in this case, they managed to keep it respectable.
With that said, the movie took some liberties that I didn't quite agree with, such as
having a rather strange third act where the Prince is all grown up and voiced by Paul Rudd.
I also would have loved to see more of the stop-motion that was used for the Little Prince segments, which was by far the film's highlight. In fact, if all those stop-motion sequences were cobbled together into a short film, it would be perfect.
I loved the soundtrack. Hans Zimmer does some of his best work in ages, and Camille's songs strike a good balance between catchy and heartfelt.
Oh, and I teared up quite a few times. Not many animated films outside of Disney/Pixar manage to have that effect on me.
So yeah, definitely not perfect in places and it got a bit derivative towards the end, but it certainly stuck with me. I'd definitely like to see it again when it comes out in theatres in the US.