MOVIE THOUGHTS - 'Phantom Boy'

If you are an American lover of obscure animation it is tempting to believe, in the face of routine, obnoxious CG animation, that independent or foreign features have a responsibility to be more aesthetically and emotionally sophisticated than the norm. While Phantom Boy is the former, it is not necessarily the latter, but it is a good reminder that all animation has the right to settle for less, so long as it strives to offer something new.

Co-directors Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli follow up their little 2010 caper A Cat In Paris with the story of Leo, a pre-teen boy battling cancer who discovers that his ailment allows him to detatch from his mortal bounds at will and fly over the urban canopy unseen. Pretty soon he befriends Alex, a hospitalized, down-on-his-luck cop who enlists Leo's help in remotely locating a criminal known as 'The Face' and bringing him to justice.

Over the past couple of months alone, Phantom Boy and The Secret Life Of Pets have offered a couple of my favorite cinematic incarnations of New York City, and for entirely opposite reasons. Where Pets gleefully exaggerated the height and quantity of Manhattan's skyscrapers, Phantom Boy celebrates the city's grunginess by casting harsh, noon-day sun and shadow upon sketchy, desaturated renderings of the cityscape. It is a more honest and contained depiction.

Felicioli continues to channel his Cubist influences with background work that often throws the laws of perspective to the four winds, and off-kilter, slightly unsettling character designs that should theoretically work in the crime genre's favor. But as with A Cat In Paris, we are saddled with an over-the-top (albeit uniquely disfigured) villain who undercuts any real threat, and a script that, while serviceable, shoehorns exposition in when the plot should already be well underway.

As is often the case, the small touches are the takeaways, from the brown-and-yellow color scheme to Serge Besset's beguiling main string theme (an upgrade from A Cat In Paris) to the way ghost-Leo gingerly wriggles his way back into his real body. It is by far the year's most worthwhile unambitious animated diversion.