In the world of fiction, tone is the trickiest element to pin down. Rather than being a literal ingredient like casting, cinematography, or narrative structure, it is the sum of all of these; the x-factor that determines whether an audience will collectively roll its eyes or lean in further for the same story. Author and pilot Antoine de Saint Exupery wielded masterful command over the delicate tone of his 1943 children's story The Little Prince, which invites very particular adjectives over the course of the titular Prince's metaphorical encounters: understated, mystical, plaintive, melancholy, elusive...
As the trailers have promised, the new animated messterpiece The Little Prince, helmed by Kung Fu Panda co-director Mark Osborne, honors these qualities during breathtaking (albeit condensed) stop-motion depictions of chapters from the novella, but indulges in overstated and overblown emotions for an invented CGI frame story that actually makes up the majority of the film. This is NOT a straight adaptation of The Little Prince. For better and worse, it is instead a feature-length engagement with the original text's themes of growing up mindfully.
We are in a modern-day utopia of efficiency and colorlessness that would make the Little Prince scoff. After an unnamed Girl (Interstellar's Mackenzie Foy) flubs up the key question during her interview for acceptance into private school, her mother puts her on a summer long study plan that has been divvied up into blocks of time no longer than fifteen minutes each. That is until the wacky old coot next door (voiced sweetly by Jeff Bridges) introduces her to the childhood joys of The Little Prince story and instills in her a passion for whimsy and optimism, all highlighted with saccharine, out-of place string swells by Hans Zimmer and Richard Harvey.
This first half plays as if nervous studio executives called for a modern-day framing device to simplify already accessible ideas (Paramount dropped the film just days before its intended U.S. theatrical release). Sure enough, the two storylines rub against each other awkwardly. Stories rooted in metaphor demand fierce concentration from the get-go, so when the film shifts from stargazing on the old man's roof to the Prince's symbolic visits to neighboring planets, The Little Prince feels out of place in its own movie!
Then the second half comes along, where the Girl retreats into her imagination to discover whether it is better to mull over the fate of a loved one, or to put faith in their continued spirit. Everything works. Everything from the expansion of the utopian landscape (which cleverly recalls an image from the book of a baobab infestation) to the gaunt, Tim Burton-esque character designs (Lou Romano of Pixar fame proveded the CG production design) to even the rescue of an older Little Prince, all works because it is metaphorical and believably something a child would concoct in his or her mind. This entire section does its own thing and owns it.
Yet up until then I found myself pining for a cut of the film featuring just the stop-motion sequences. Production designer Alexander Juhasz adorns everything from hair to desert sand with conspicuous fabric surfaces, and hangs the stars rom strings, all designed to steer this world away from the literal. And yet the character designs are elegant translations of their literary counterparts, which I particularly appreciated when the Aviator, searching for purpose in his adventures, evolves from a paper cutout to a full-fledged model upon meeting the titular Prince.
Other inspired moments are small but valuable. Throwaway exchanges between the Girl and the old man are choice (at one point she scales a tree and remarks that she is afraid. "Why do you think I sent you?" is his reply). Even Hans Zimmer contributes some hypnotic solo string ostinatos and unnerving percussive elements. Perhaps the CG framing device, however bombastic in execution, will resonate with millennials facing intense professional and social pressure.
On Animation Studios from France completed the animation in Montreal. Mark Osborne fancifully pitched the film with a suitcase containing Prince paraphernalia nearly 400 times over several years. The dedication shows, and even while I believe Spike Jonze's adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are stands as a more faithful adaptation of the tone of The Little Prince than this film, it is gratifying that this ambitious project has found its way to American audiences.
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