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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ’s “Le Petit Prince” has been translated into more than 250 languages and reportedly sold over 140 million copies worldwide. It is in millions of homes, having been read to millions of children. There have been radio plays, television adaptations and film versions. So why tell this story again? Could Mark Osborne , the director of “Kung Fu Panda,” really have something new to say regarding this timeless tale? And how do you adapt a relatively thin novella into a feature film that will keep kids entertained and adults entranced? “The Little Prince,” premiering on Netflix this Friday after Paramount inexplicably dumped it earlier this year (and after it has made almost $100 million worldwide) takes the themes of its source material and expands on them to create a lovely, big-hearted tale of adventure, friendship and imagination. Without a single pop song to be heard or a bodily humor joke to be endured, “The Little Prince” doesn’t talk down to its audience, treating them with the respect that so few American family films bother to do. It is a cinematic crime that the abrasive garbage that is “The Angry Birds Movie” and “Ice Age: Collision Course” get national releases while most people don’t even know “The Little Prince” is coming to win their hearts this weekend.

Osborne and his team shift focus to a new protagonist, “The Little Girl” (beautifully, richly voiced by Mackenzie Foy ), a smart heroine who is essentially being trained by her mother ( Rachel McAdams ) for the big, dangerous world of being an adult. She’s trying to get into the prestigious Werth Academy and her mother has her entire summer vacation planned out on a big board. Let’s just say, in this community in which all the homes look identical and every neighborhood is designed like a grid, this poor girl is going to be doing a lot of studying and not a lot of playing. Until she meets her neighbor.

While her single mother is at work, The Little Girl strikes up a friendship with the old man who lives next door. In a house that contains all the curves and quirks missing from the rest of the neighborhood, “The Aviator” ( Jeff Bridges ) tells his new friends stories, including the time he met “The Little Prince.” The details of The Aviator’s stories aren’t nearly as important as the themes they convey. As The Aviator relays stories of “The Rose” ( Marion Cotillard ), “ The Fox ” ( James Franco ), “The Snake” ( Benicio Del Toro ), and others, we watch The Little Girl come out of her shell. She’s fascinated by The Aviator’s drawings (which will be familiar to fans of the book) and learns the lessons that they just don’t teach you at school, even the Werth Academy. As it should be, “The Little Prince” is heavy with philosophical observations like “Growing up is not the problem, forgetting is” and “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.” It’s notable that Osborne and company aren't afraid of deeper themes. It could have been tempting to turn “The Little Prince” into a wacky adventure movie (I guarantee there have been scripts of that nature on Hollywood desks), but Osborne’s take is deeply emotional and heartfelt. It gets a little repetitive in the mid-section, but the final act, which I won’t spoil, essentially brings The Aviator’s stories and lessons to life, making the journey worthwhile.

It helps one overlook the narrative and philosophical repetition that the film is accomplished on a technical level as well. Most notably, the score, co-composed by Hans Zimmer , is a lyrical, lovely piece of work. It carries the viewer along, fluidly tying together the worlds of “The Little Prince” (both the girl’s and the story of the prince). Visually, the first act of the film, with its square trees to match its square houses, reminded me of the suburban rigidity of the first act of Brad Bird ’s “ The Incredibles ,” while visions of the world of the title character reminded me of LAIKA gems like “ Coraline ” and “Paranorman.” These are good comparisons to make when one watches a family film. It’s in good company.

Ultimately, “The Little Prince” is a film that everyone should be happy to show their children. They might get a little bored, but if they even take away a positive theme or two, it’s worthwhile. And, in the end, adults might remember an important truth about the world as well. Becoming an adult doesn’t mean giving up on dreams, whimsy, imagination or love. It’s a lesson that children’s fiction has been teaching us since long before Saint-Exupéry published his hit novella. And yet in a world that seems increasingly dominated by hate speech and stories of violence, it’s one that we could stand to learn again.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

The Little Prince (2016)

Rated PG for mild thematic elements.

108 minutes

Jeff Bridges as The Aviator (voice)

Rachel McAdams as The Mother (voice)

Paul Rudd as Mr. Prince (voice)

Marion Cotillard as The Rose (voice)

James Franco as The Fox (voice)

Benicio Del Toro as The Snake (voice)

Ricky Gervais as The Conceited Man (voice)

Bud Cort as The King (voice)

Paul Giamatti as The Academy Teacher (voice)

Riley Osborne as The Little Prince (voice)

Albert Brooks as The Businessman (voice)

Mackenzie Foy as The Little Girl (voice)

Mark Osborne
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Irena Brignull
Bob Persichetti

Cinematographer (co-cinematographer)

Carole Kravetz Aykanian
Matt Landon
Richard Harvey
Hans Zimmer

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‘The Little Prince’ Review: Netflix Delivers A Strange, Satisfying, Star-Studded Adaptation Of The Kid Lit Classic

David ehrlich.

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In the dedication of his immensely beloved 1943 novella, “ The Little Prince ,” author and aristocrat (and aviator) Antoine de Saint-Exupéry made a passing remark that succinctly captured the soul of his story: “All grown-ups were children first (but few of them remember it).” While the unique locations and landscapes of Saint Exupéry’s tale might seem to resist adaptation — this is, after all, a narrative that splits its time between the Sahara Desert and a galaxy of tiny asteroids suspended in the stars — there’s a good reason why it’s been reimagined as everything from an opera, to a ballet, a stage play, an anime, a pop-up book, a graphic novel, a television series and a rather terrible live-action film by “Singin’ in the Rain” director Stanley Donen. Despite a multitude of logistical hurdles, the fundamental essence of “The Little Prince” is so pure that the narrative has proven capable of surviving any kind of transformation so long as that kernel of truth remains intact.

Now, “The Little Prince” has been reimagined once again, this time as an independently financed $80 million movie that sandwiches a hyper-literal telling of Saint-Exupéry’s novella (told via 2D stop-motion craftwork) into an elaborate framing device that uses CG animation (in the style of Dreamworks) to sell the classic on a contemporary audience.

Produced in Paris and Montreal and helmed by “Kung Fu Panda” director Mark Osborne , this singular, star-studded and fiercely surreal adaptation shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it (almost) holds together because of its steadfast dedication to the idea expressed in that of its source material. Even at its wildest moments, even when the movie flies so far off the reservation that it seems to have more in common with “Super Mario Galaxy” than it does a landmark of children’s literature, “The Little Prince” never loses sight of Saint-Exupéry’s most urgent message: “Growing up isn’t the problem, forgetting is.”

The film begins almost identically to the novella, as a wizened old narrator (voiced by Jeff Bridges , natch) reflects on his peculiar childhood drawings, calling special attention to the literal-minded adults who rejected his imagination. From there, things take a sharp left turn into new material, as the script (by “The Boxtrolls” writer Irena Brignull) puts a pin in “The Little Prince” and shifts its attention to a dystopian metropolis that looks like a computer chip when seen from above. It’s there, in that thoroughly modern city of straight lines and stringent school admissions tests, where an unnamed 8-year-old girl (Mackenzie Foy) is struggling to make sense of the life plan that her mother (Rachel McAdams) has laid out for her — amusingly, it accounts for every minute of her future.

But there’s hope in this brave new world. For the Little Girl, it comes in the form of the wacky old hoarder (Bridges) who lives in the house next door. A retired Aviator who still keeps the rusted remnants of a propeller plane in his backyard, the Little Girl’s neighbor has a half-forgotten story that he’s desperate to tell — in our heroine, he’s finally found the perfect audience. The story the Aviator tells the Little Girl is that of the Little Prince, Osborne’s film ditching the soulless CG animation of the framing device in favor of painstakingly tactile puppetry (an almighty diss to today’s de rigueur digital technique, which is properly contextualized here as a sterile corporate aesthetic bereft of imagination).

READ MORE: Can Netflix Save ‘The Little Prince’?

You might remember how it goes: Once upon a time, the Aviator crashed in the desert, where he crossed paths with a Little Prince (Riley Osborne, the director’s son) who came from a tiny planet and was lovesick over a rose ( Marion Cotillard ). Using stop-motion to faithfully recreate the look and feel of the novella’s watercolor illustrations, the film plows through the events of Saint-Exupéry’s text, following the Little Prince as he hops from planet to planet, meeting all sorts of greedy men and ominous animals (voiced by the likes of Ricky Gervais, Albert Brooks, James Franco and Benicio del Toro) as he scours the heavens for meaning. What can we hold on to in a world where nothing can truly be owned?

It’s striking how little Saint-Exupéry’s free-associative story has in common with the entertainments on which kids are raised in the 21st century, and Osborne’s film retreats back to its framing device whenever the source material’s philosophical musings threaten to mute out the plot. “The Little Prince” is abstract enough as it is, and it can be hard to piece together when you’re forced to drop the thread every few minutes. Children may be capable of far more than we give them credit for, but it’s hard to gauge their patience for koans like “What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.” On the page, such dreamy thoughts feel like a first language, but here — despite Osborne’s tremendous efforts to acclimate kids to the 20th Century parable — the film’s modes seem in competition with one another.

At least it’s a fair fight. Shifting the novella’s grim ending into the “real world,” Osborne’s adaptation certainly tries to make the newly invented bits hold their own. It’s hard to believe where the film goes in its final 30 minutes, shifting from Jacques Tati to Terry Gilliam (and throwing Paul Rudd into the mix) as it churns all of its various morals into a stew of crazy developments, all of the increasingly bonkers visual splendor geared towards selling the idea that “One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eyes.”

It’s all a bit counterintuitive, but it works because even (or especially) the movie’s craziest moments are geared towards the idea that the heroine’s world is an unnatural place. We are born with imagination, we learn how to live without it. “The Little Prince” is probably too opaque for children, and it’s definitely too strained for adults, but it’s still refreshing to see a movie that flies with the untamed, sometimes illogical creative impulses of its target audiences. It doesn’t solve the problem of most contemporary animation, but it does perfectly diagnose it: “Grown-ups, they never understand anything by themselves.”

“The Little Prince” opens in theaters and on Netflix on Friday, August 5.

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The Little Prince review – charming story encumbered by Netflix update

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s children’s tale is reworked as a flashback story told to a lonely girl in a feature-length animation reminiscent of Up and Inside Out

A ntoine de Saint-Exupéry’s imperishably strange classic The Little Prince , from 1943, now has its first full-length animated version, presented by Netflix. This is the story of an aviator who crashes in the Sahara and there discovers a holy-innocent “prince” from another planet (or rather asteroid) who has stories to tell about his upbringing and his adventures all across the galaxy. He appears to understand the Aviator in the way that no-one did in the Aviator’s own childhood. Stanley Donen once directed a live-action version in the 1970s, written by Alan Jay Lerner.

This animation grafts a new narrative level on the existing story, effectively repurposing it as a flashback: the Aviator is now an old guy who befriends a lonely little girl who has just moved in next door. She finds pages of his handwritten story, and he tells her all about it – while becoming her best and only friend.

It is directed by Mark Osborne, whose credits include Kung Fu Panda and The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, but it is a French co-production, and there are two language versions, French and English. The animation is very American, with obvious visual echoes of Up and Inside Out , but the language we see on the screen is French, from the signs outside the soulless Werth Academie – which typifies the dull, hateful world of anti-imagination – to the Aviator’s own dog-eared diaries and illustrated manuscripts.

A little girl (voiced by Mackenzie Foy) is being bullied, chivvied and drilled by her ambitious mother (Rachel McAdams) into preparing for a top private school: the Werth Academie. They move into the school’s catchment area, and the mother draws up an impossibly tough homework and activity wall chart – which naturally depresses the little girl greatly – but otherwise seems to have no interest in hanging out and talking to her own daughter. She just breezes off to the office with a negligent farewell: “You’re my senior VP!” So the little girl befriends the Aviator next door: a wacky old eccentric (voiced by Jeff Bridges) who keeps a semi-functioning aircraft in his back garden. The Aviator entrances the little girl with his memories of the Prince (voiced by Paul Rudd).

The flashback animations are true to the original book’s illustrations.

The present-day story unfolds in the pin-sharp Pixar-style animation with all its hyperreal detail and sheen, and the little girl does incidentally rather resemble Riley from Inside Out . But the “classic” sequences from the past are rendered in a simpler, blockier style – effectively a three-dimensional approximation of the illustration in Saint-Exupéry’s original book.

In both French and English versions, and in different languages, Marion Cotillard voices the profoundly mysterious character of the Rose, with whom the Prince had fallen in love, and Cotillard is the only actor to contribute to both films. (In the French movie, incidentally, André Dussollier voices the old Aviator – an actor with a rather smoother, more classic image than Bridges.) Among the exotic personages that the Prince had come across in his travels, Benicio Del Toro voices a wily serpent; Ricky Gervais is the conceited and narcissistic man of fashion; and Albert Brooks is the money-mad businessman. James Franco plays the crafty fox who tells her: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.”

It’s a film with charm and sweetness, but for me is structurally encumbered by this new present-day narrative level: the smarter, zappier modern animated style makes the marionette-style images of the past look a bit low-octane and quaint.

The Little Prince is now streaming on Netflix
Animation in film
Rachel McAdams
Marion Cotillard

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Film Review: ‘The Little Prince’

Antoine de Saint-Exupery's timeless classic gets a loving 21st-century makeover, especially in its handcrafted stop-motion sequences.

By Scott Foundas

Scott Foundas

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Any animated feature screening in Cannes in the wake of Pixar’s universally adored “Inside Out” was bound to seem like an anticlimax. And when the movie in question happens to be an adaptation of one of the most beloved children’s novels of all time, the potential for disappointment looms especially large. But to the sure relief of armchair aviators everywhere, director Mark Osborne ’s “The Little Prince” turns out to be a respectful, lovingly reimagined take on Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic 1943 tale, which adds all manner of narrative bells and whistles to the author’s slender, lyrical story of friendship between a pilot and a mysterious extraterrestrial voyager, but stays true to its timeless depiction of childhood wonderment at odds with grown-up disillusionment. Independently made (on a reported $80 million budget) by French producer Dimitri Rassam , “The Little Prince” may lack the fast pace and high-concept storytelling of today’s most popular animated fare, but it should strike a solid chord with family audiences around the world (where the film has been heavily presold) and particularly in France, where Paramount opens the film July 29.

Published a year before Saint-Exupery disappeared somewhere over Corsica in his Lockheed P-38 fighter plane, “The Little Prince” took its inspiration from an earlier air disaster, in which the author, trying to break the record time in a Paris-Saigon race, crashed in the Sahara desert, near the Nile delta. From that, Saint-Exupery spun a fanciful, faintly ethereal fable about a downed airman who finds himself face-to-face with a curious, blond-haired young boy who claims to be the sole inhabitant of a distant asteroid (#B-612), and who regales the pilot with tales of the interplanetary travels that eventually brought him to earth.

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Those adventures consist largely of meetings with puffed-up, self-important adults who imagine themselves to be powerful despots but are, in fact, just orbiting the universe alone on their own similarly uninhabited rocks. But there are also touches of melancholy romance, in the form of the Prince’s codependent relationship with a very demanding rose (which sends him fleeing B-612 in the first place), and a darkly poetic ending that can be interpreted as either a salvation or a suicide. Seventy years later, the book’s influence can be seen in everything from “The English Patient” to “The Lego Movie.”

The book was scarcely enough material for a feature film, which didn’t stop Hollywood from trying one in 1974 — an ill-advised live-action version, directed by “Singin’ in the Rain’s” Stanley Donen, that padded things out with a suite of unmemorable Lerner and Lowe songs, and one genuinely dazzling Bob Fosse dance routine. For the new film, Osborne (“Kung Fu Panda”) and screenwriters Irena Brignull (“The Boxtrolls”) and Bob Persichetti have taken the generally more effective tack of nesting Saint-Exupery’s story within an elaborate framing device set in the kind of modular modern metropolis prophesied by Jacques Tati’s “Playtime,” full of technology and free of wonder.

It’s there that we first meet the otherwise unnamed Little Girl (voiced by Mackenzie Foy), who lives with her single mom (Rachel McAdams) in cookie-cutter suburbia and spends every waking moment preparing for her entrance into a highly competitive prep school where students are stripped of the vestiges of childhood and molded into serious-minded, pint-sized adults. (The overscheduling of Little Girl’s life registers as a sly nod to the section of Saint-Exupery’s book set on a planet where thirst-quenching pills have been invented to save people the time it takes to drink a glass of water.)

Fortunately for Little Girl, her new next-door neighbor turns out to be an eccentric old Aviator (voiced by the doyen of eccentric old coots, Jeff Bridges), who comes into her life when an errant propeller from his backyard airplane careers into her house, and then sets about telling her his strange desert tale. As he does, “The Little Prince” makes a remarkable stylistic leap from the accomplished but familiar CG environs of these opening scenes (big-eyed, bobble-headed humans; modernist-futurist design influences) into 2D stop-motion animation, bringing the world of Saint-Exupery’s original story to life in beautiful handcrafted images based on the author’s own crudely elegant watercolors (seen in the book’s first printing and all subsequent editions).

And that is how “The Little Prince” introduces us to its title character (well voiced by Riley Osborne, the director’s son), his forlorn Rose (Marion Cotillard), and the fellow travelers — some helpful, some useless, some faintly menacing — he encounters on his journey: a Conceited Man (Ricky Gervais) who craves the applause of a nonexistent crowd; a King (Bud Cort) who presides over an empty realm; a Businessman ( Albert Brooks ) who claims to own all the stars in the heavens; a sinuous desert Snake (Benicio Del Toro); and a wild Fox (James Franco) who yearns to be tamed.

These scenes are a joy to behold — a bliss-out of brightly colored paper and hand-molded clay that can stand shoulder to shoulder with the texturally varied and vibrant stop-motion work seen in Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and Henry Selick’s “Coraline.” But after 20 minutes or so, “The Little Prince” returns us to the CG present and a somewhat overlong midsection in which Little Girl suffers the de rigueur recriminations of mom and is forced to distance herself from her new friend. Things pick up again around the one-hour mark, when Little Girl takes flight herself in Aviator’s plane and ends up in a topsy-turvy alterna-universe where grown-ups rule the roost and the now-adolescent Prince (Paul Rudd) toils as a lowly nobody, having himself forgotten who he really is.

“The Little Prince” plays things relatively straight and safe from there, with the sort of antic, big-energy climax common to nearly all mass-market blockbusters, animated or otherwise. But even then, the film remains a consistent visual treat (the computer animation is more inspired in this section, with the grown-ups depicted as a colorless, zombified mass of tall, narrow bodies) and always echoes Saint-Exupery’s core theme of looking at the world through the hopeful, uncorrupted eyes of a child, where sometimes what appears to be a hat may in fact be a boa constrictor with an elephant inside.

In lieu of traditional musical numbers, composers Hans Zimmer and Richard Harvey provide a suitably wispy, wistful underscore, interlaced with a few original ballads performed by French chanteuse Camille and several classic chansons francises from the immortal Charles Trenet.

Reviewed at Cannes Film Festival (noncompeting), May 22, 2015. Running time: 106 MIN.

Production: (Animated — France-Italy) A Paramount (in France)/Weinstein Co. (in U.S.)/Warner Bros. (in Germany/Japan) release of an On Animation Studios production in co-production with Orange Studio, LPPTV, M6 Films, with the participation of Canal Plus, M6, W9. (International sales: Wild Bunch, Paris.) Produced by Dimitri Rassam, Aton Soumache, Alexis Vonarb. Executive producers, Jinko Gotoh, Mark Osborne, Moritz Borman, Thierry Pasquet, Paul Rassam.
Crew: Directed by Mark Osborne. Screenplay, Irena Brignull, Bob Persichetti, based on “Le Petit Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery; head of story, Persichetti. (Color, widescreen); editors, Matthew Landon, Carole Kravetz; music, Hans Zimmer, Richard Harvey; production designers, Lou Romano, Celine Desrumaux; sound designer (Dolby Digital), Tim Nielsen; supervising sound editors, Nielsen, Christopher Barnett; re-recording mixers, Nielsen, Barnett; visual effects supervisor, Pascal Bertrand; character designer, Peter De Seve; co-character designer, Barthelemy Maunoury; CG character supervisor, Hidetaka Yosumi; CG animation supervisor, Jason Boose; CG lighting supervisor, Adel Abada; stop-motion creative director, Jamie Caliri; stop-motion production designer and character designer, Alex Juhasz; stop-motion lead animator, Anthony Scott; associate producers, Brice Garnie, Olivier Rakoto; casting, Sarah Finn.
With: Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, James Franco, Marion Cotillard, Benicio Del Toro, Ricky Gervais, Bud Cort, Paul Giamatti, Riley Osborne, Albert Brooks, Mackenzie Foy, Paul Rudd. (English dialogue)

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The Little Prince

This netflix original movie makes a conventional (but good) animated film out of antoine de saint-exupéry’s mysterious novella..

The Little Prince , Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1943 novella about an aeronaut who meets a boy from outer space, felt, 70 years ago, like a dream—it took place in a world of unprocessed psychology, the thoughts and feelings you might have before you even realize you’re thinking and feeling. The prince loved a rose, which loved him back but tormented him with demands. He flew from asteroid to asteroid, meeting lonely denizens of the drab adult world: an acquisitive businessman, a narcissist, an impotent ruler. Having arrived at the Sahara, he befriended a fox, entranced the aviator, and made a deathly bargain with a snake. The Little Prince was all imagination and couldn’t remain on Earth. So the aviator turned him into something unearthly: a book.

And then Mark Osborne turned him into a movie. Parts of the original film The Little Prince , distributed by Netflix, hint at the source’s dreamlike qualities.* The animation (a mix of CG and stop-motion pulled off beautifully by Lou Romano and Céline Desrumaux) is expressive but not precise. Richard Harvey and Hans Zimmer’s twinkling celestial score sounds like a childhood music box heard through internal fog.* But the book’s unique tone—its peculiar openness, clarity, and lyricism—is hard to sustain over 100-plus minutes of plot-driven screen time. With Osborne’s adaptation, we get all the necessary cinematic trappings: character development, jokes, wholesome messaging (friendship is important), a bad guy to escape, a plane to be whisked away from a ginormous trash compactor at the last possible moment. If Saint-Exupéry offered readers a petite, queer-tasting square of some delicate cake they’d never heard of, Netflix has served up a familiar, fragrant, well-balanced meal. You’ll enjoy it, but it’s the cake you’ll remember.

Osborne made the smart and interesting choice not to simply adapt his source material but to build a framing story around it. His Little Prince begins with “the Little Girl” (voiced by Mackenzie Foy), a joyless kid being groomed by her mother (Rachel McAdams) to start at an elite academy, where she’ll learn to “be essential.” Through the school, full of bureaucrats conducting spooky, inscrutable exams, we get a glimpse of a grown-up world of implacable boredom and ennui. Working people are sad and uninspired—including the Little Girl’s overprotective mom, who has mapped out every minute of her daughter’s life on a huge magnetic chart. (“You’re my senior VP,” she tells her child affectionately.) The Little Girl’s summer vacation is to be spent studying, doing aerobics, and preparing to “adult”—a terrifying prospect, indeed.

But then she chances upon her batty old neighbor, the Aviator (Jeff Bridges), who shares with her the illustrated pages he made describing his long-ago encounter with the Little Prince. When we enter the Aviator’s memory, or maybe his diary, the CG animation shifts to stop-motion. Here, Osborne repackages scenes beloved from the book: The Aviator draws the Prince three unsatisfactory sheep and then a box with a theoretical sheep inside, thus cementing their friendship; the prince tames a fox; the prince’s rose begs him to enclose her in a glass dome to protect her from the cold. (That hothouse metaphor acquires new meaning in the Little Girl’s universe of stifling parents and teachers.)

And it’s here that the film comes close to rivaling the novella’s visual beauty, especially with the wide-faced, fire-colored fox, whose enormous wavy tail is pure delight—a bit of extravagance for its own sake that aligns with the story’s rejection of the “essential.” That fox, by the way, is voiced by James Franco, his light delivery an asset to the stark loveliness of the original text: “I have no need of you, and you have no need of me. … But if you tame me, then we shall need each other.”

Man, the first half of this movie is good. Its filmified goodness only approximates the aerial mysteries of Saint-Exupéry’s book, but the twining narratives of the Little Girl and the Little Prince—held together by the Aviator, a friend to both—so artfully blend poetry and gentle humor that you don’t care. There’s a warmth to these characters that underscores the degree to which movie nights in 2016 might be what reading aloud was in 1943. In the film, the Aviator gives the Little Girl pages of his story (which will become Saint-Exupéry’s novella) because he thinks she “could use a friend.” (“That’s OK, nobody understands it anyway,” he adds, in a sly comment on the original’s koanlike self-possession.) If Saint-Exupéry was primarily concerned with representing the wonderment of childhood and the joys of the imagination, Osborne wants to remind us about love. The Little Girl loves the Aviator and, through him, comes to love the Little Prince. Her reading doesn’t just unlock the world of the possible—it is an act of connection. It helps her “see with [her] heart.”

The second half of the film, though, upends the tone and strategy of the first. Hour No. 2 shoves characters into an airplane and sends them whirling through loops of plot, which has the effect of forcing a distracted Osborne to abandon all subtlety where his themes are concerned. The Aviator falls ill, and the Little Girl goes off in search of the Little Prince. She ends up on a bleak, urban planet inhabited only by adults, including some of the absurd allegorical personalities first sketched by Saint-Exupéry. The titular royal has grown up; he’s a sad-hearted janitor in the employ of a craven bully known as the Businessman, who wants to own the stars. The Little Girl must help “Mr. Prince” remember who he is and escape. In the process, she has a shot at shattering the glass dome in which the stars are imprisoned.

Rest assured that what comes next meets the kids’ movie quota for sweetness and uplift. Yet the Little Girl’s adventures with Mr. Prince, while charming and funny and scary, are purged of strangeness. There is a vain policeman and an “essential book of all that is essential” but nothing surprising; certainly, no hats turn out to be boa constrictors on closer inspection. Osborne hasn’t crashed the plane; he’s just skillfully piloted it back into Earth’s atmosphere, where it zips along until the last few sentimental callbacks to Saint-Exupéry herald a confident landing.

But The Little Prince needs unworldliness—both in the sense that its characters hail from outer space and in the clear-eyed naïveté of its creations. Anything too didactic, too useful feels suspect. The more insistently the movie articulates its ode to imagination, the less spontaneous and the more straitjacketed it feels.

Even in its most earthbound moments, Netflix’s The Little Prince does a lot right. It addresses the novella’s serious woman deficit, not only by creating the Little Girl and her mother, but—fascinatingly and enchantingly—through the soundtrack. Harvey and Zimmer’s score often features a female vocalist, Camille , either singing or whispering. Is she the Prince’s lost rose, a profoundly unknowable presence throughout the story? Some aspect of the Little Girl’s psyche, beckoning her onward?

It’s important to remember that Saint-Exupéry wasn’t just an aristocratic writer and poet—he was an aviator. (I don’t know if Osborne can fly a plane, but he did manage to direct Kung Fu Panda , which counts for something.) The Frenchman believed in books as modes of transport, and maybe the most thoughtful tribute the Netflix team can pay him is to ferry a new audience back to his original work. In that case, I won’t be so churlish as to trash this Little Prince . As a film, it does the “essential”—the novella will do the rest.

Correction, Aug. 9, 2016: This review originally stated that The Little Prince is a Netflix original. Netflix acquired the film from Paramount . It also stated that Hans Zimmer wrote the score to The Little Prince. The score was composed by Zimmer and Richard Harvey.

‘The Little Prince’ Review: Classic Tale Becomes Half a Good Movie

The parts of this animated adaptation that work are so delightful that they make the parts that don’t even more glaring

While it’s definitely family-friendly, and often visually stunning, the ambitious film adaptation of “The Little Prince” may leave adult viewers royally flummoxed. Portions are faithful to Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s 1943 much-loved, oft-quoted classic translated into over 250 languages. But the overall effect here is a muddled one that feels like, at most, half of a good movie. An internationally starry voice cast does little to redeem it.

Premiering on Netflix and in limited theatrical release on Aug. 5, “The Little Prince” is reportedly one of the priciest French animated features, and the stop-motion animated sequences are exhilaratingly gorgeous. When the film hews to its source material, the results are enchanting, but director Mark Osborne (“Kung Fu Panda”) and writers Bob Persichetti (“Puss in Boots”) and Irena Brignull (“The Boxtrolls”) create a predictable and sentimental framing device around the slim tale that undercuts the potency of the book’s meditations on love and mortality.

That present-day story, rendered in hyper-realistic, exaggeratedly big-eyed CGI, seems like almost a separate movie, with its focus on the friendship forged between an eccentric elderly aviator (voiced by Jeff Bridges ) and his next-door neighbor, a latchkey child whom the writers never bothered to name ( Mackenzie Foy ). In the not-too-distant background hovers her overbearing, Type A helicopter mom ( Rachel McAdams ).

The novella’s tale of the power of love is essentially a graceful story within that larger, clunkier contemporary story, beautifully rendered in stop motion. It’s enchanting, painterly and timeless, befitting the iconic French classic, with a style that feels both fresh and appropriately reverential. The stop-motion segment has a rich, texture, with a cut-paper quality, artfully bringing the book’s watercolor illustrations to vivid, albeit delicate, life. In this enthralling portion, Riley Osborne voices the Prince, Marion Cotillard is the Rose, Ricky Gervais plays the Conceited Man, Benicio del Toro is the snake and James Franco enlivens the fox.

The modern sequence, set in an antiseptic, cookie-cutter style suburbia, is a well-meaning cautionary tale about the importance of following one’s dream, making the most of the time allotted and avoiding conformity. But as delivered, the message fails to pack the requisite punch.

The little girl and her micro-managing mom move to a muted new neighborhood so the girl can attend an elite academy. She is tasked with an elaborate and time-consuming preparation schedule for the summer, every moment strictly programmed, leading up to the start of school. But her meeting with the kindly, fun-loving Aviator who lives in the ramshackle house next door — apparently the only colorful, non sterile-looking edifice in the entire city — stirs things up. He tells her the story of the Little Prince, and enchantment ensues as the stop-motion kicks in. If only the emotional shading between the girl and the Aviator were as rich and enthralling.

A final sequence — meant to be action-packed and exciting — feels tacked-on, hectic and overly extended. The Aviator falls ill and the little girl flies his rickety bi-plane to a dystopian and distant city. The futuristic urban nightmare is run by the dictatorial Businessman ( Albert Brooks ). Under his employ is the Prince — now grown up and a disenfranchised janitor ( Paul Rudd ). (Transforming the title character into a miserable under-employed man-child who would qualify to attend Trump rallies comes off like literary heresy.) Once Mr. Prince is freed from his subjugation, they return to his asteroid with the aim of his being re-united with his beloved rose.

What happens next is nothing like the original intent — or poetic nature — of the book, which focused on love’s power to render the ordinary extraordinary. Instead, it becomes about retaining childlike enthusiasm, which is a worthy enough theme, but markedly different from the original. The movie has an annoying habit of seeming to end several times, giving it the sense that it’s substantially longer than its 106 minutes.

With its charming, but thin, narrative, heartfelt spirituality and mythical elements, the Saint-Exupery book doesn’t lend itself to easy adaptation. Filmmakers have floundered trying (including an effort by Stanley Donen in 1974 which starred Gene Wilder and Bob Fosse).

Impressively, this latest undertaking, specifically the stop motion portions, comes close at times to capturing that ineffable magic. And it’s those exquisitely rendered moments of synchronicity that make the formulaic turns of this big-screen “The Little Prince” all the more disheartening.

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DVD & Streaming

The Little Prince

Animation , Comedy , Drama , Kids , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Content Caution

In Theaters

August 5, 2016
Voices of: Jeff Bridges as The Aviator; Mackenzie Foy as the Little Girl; Rachel McAdams as the Mother; Paul Rudd as Mr. Prince; Marion Cotillard as the Rose; James Franco as the Fox; Benicio Del Toro as the Snake; Ricky Gervais as the Conceited Man; Bud Cort as the King; Paul Giamatti as the Academy Teacher; Riley Osborne as the Little Prince; Albert Brooks as the Businessman

Home Release Date

Mark Osborne

Distributor

Paramount Pictures/Netflix

Movie Review

Matters of Consequence.

From the opening shot of The Little Prince , we see a world preoccupied with Matters of Consequence. We see a city from high in the air, looking for all the world like a microchip. As the camera closes in, we see ant-like cars scurrying through the streets, people hurrying from place to place. It’s a world of hard angles and gleaming gray, of cool lines and clinical beauty. If Siri made a city, it might look like this. It is a place of purpose, of busy-ness, of … consequence.

And one Little Girl fits right in.

For years, she and her mother have been focused on one overarching task: To gain entrance to the prestigious Werth Academie. It’s a most consequential school where future leaders are groomed for success and six-figure salaries, where childhood is set aside for Mandarin Chinese lessons, 14-part algebraic equations and regimented excellence. “What will you be when you grow up?” The school’s posters ask from the hallway walls. “Essential!” They answer.

But things go awry when the girl is interviewed by Werth’s gatekeepers. She answers the wrong question and faints dead away on the stage. No matter, her mother reassures her: They’ll simply buy a home in the Werth school district and thus slide through the admissions process through the back door. “You’re going to Werth Academie whether they want you or not!” her mother declares.

And so she will. Mom buys an uber-modern home at a rock-bottom price—the property value lowered, presumably, by the rickety Victorian monstrosity sitting on the lot next door.

With it being summer vacation, the little girl has nearly two months to get ready for Werth’s rigorous academic life: Her mother figures she can just about do it if she wastes not an instant. She sets up a calendar divvied by the minute: Exercise; algebra; microbiology … it’s all there. And as long as the Little Girl can go with a little less sleep, everything should be fine. Just fine.

An old man lives in that Victorian pile of rubble next door—an aviator, they say. At least he has a rusty old plane in his back yard that he keeps tinkering with, trying to get it flying again.

The coot has no regard for the girl’s schedule, no understanding of Matters of Consequence. When he tries to start his plane, the propeller flies right through her wall, throwing off her first-day regimen something awful. Then, while she’s trying to study some algebrochemical whatnot, he sends a paper airplane right through her window. The nerve.

She shuts the window and closes the blinds … but she picks up the airplane and sees that there are words on it. And drawings. Something about a pilot stranded in the desert. And a sheep. And a little prince.

Clearly, this is not a Matter of Consequence. It is, in fact, another waste of time.

But the Little Girl picks up the page anyway. And she begins to read.

Positive Elements

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,” we’re told. And indeed, The Little Prince is a story that values heart over head. It is concerned with Matters of Consequence, too—concerned that we can be too preoccupied with such matters, that we can lose our sense of joy and mystery. The lessons here aren’t always conveyed in the healthiest of ways, but it’s a good reminder of many salient truths that we sometimes forget.

It reminds us that the world’s values don’t necessarily reflect the true worth of something.

It reminds us that there’s a certain beauty in “waste”—that is, time “wasted” on enjoying a good book, having an afternoon picnic or spending time with a friend.

It reminds us that childhood—as wasteful a time as we have in life—is precious. Indeed, it is invaluable. But it insists that we should never strive to simply be children: “Growing up is not the problem,” the Aviator tells us. “Forgetting is.”

It suggests that the things most precious to us aren’t made so because of a monetary value, but rather through something more intangible … the time we spend, the work we put into something, the affection we develop. When the Little Prince befriends a fox, for instance, it’s their familiarity and friendship that binds them together. It’s not that the fox is a remarkable fox … but the time and effort that the Little Prince and Fox put into their relationship make it remarkable.

The Little Girl and the Aviator put a lot of time into their own friendship. For the girl, that friendship opens up new vistas of poetry and imagination that she never knew existed. The Aviator, who knows he doesn’t have much time left on earth, gets to tell his story—a story he believes is worth telling. And together, they help rescue a character from a life of inconsequential Consequence.

And let’s not forget the mother, who’s initially so frustrated and angry that the Aviator has spoiled her precious child’s plan. She comes to understand that there should be more to childhood, and indeed more to life, than plotting out one’s time to be most efficient and successful. And eventually, she thanks the Aviator for helping her daughter … and helping her see that basic truth.

Spiritual Elements

The book The Little Prince has sometimes been used to illustrate Christian themes. And while there’s no explicit reference to a particular faith in the movie, you can almost draw dotted lines from some of the positives listed above to well-known Bible verses. Compared to the lyrical prose of author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, however, the spiritual parallels feel a bit clumsier here.

There’s a great deal of talk that real truth goes beyond what we can see or touch or test. This is frustrating for the Little Girl when she struggles with the concept of death. But the Aviator and the Little Prince himself insist that our bodies are simply husks, and at death (or apparent death) they’re emptied of everything that’s important. And when the Little Girl insists that there’s no way of knowing if that’s true—of knowing that people live on somewhere else when their bodies die—the Aviator says, simply, “I choose to believe …”

The Aviator tells the Little Girl that The Little Prince is out there somewhere, “helping us.” And The Little Prince himself, when a strange seed lands on the tiny planet on which he lives, says that he knows the resulting plant “will be miraculous.”

Sexual Content

Violent content.

The Little Girl falls out of a tree and skins her hands. “I’m gonna have to amputate,” the Aviator jokes. A plane propeller flies just feet from where the Little Girl is standing, smashing into her house and creating a huge crater. In what appears to be a dream or imagined sequence, someone gets thwacked on the head with a bowling ball, while others are pinched and prodded by machinery. Someone falls from a wall.

In the Aviator’s story, his life is in some peril in the middle of the desert.

[ Spoiler Warning ] Those familiar with the book The Little Prince know that the titular character apparently “dies” in the end, struck and poisoned by a snake in the desert. He allows himself to be struck willingly: He can’t get back to his home planet carrying such a heavy body, he says—but it might smack some of suicide. The Aviator says that it’s coming close to time for him to join the Little Prince, and indeed he is eventually rushed to the hospital. The movie suggests that he, too, dies, though the Little Girl can hear both he and the Prince laughing when she looks at the stars.

Crude or Profane Language

Outside one use of the word “Jeez,” the film is profanity free.

Drug and Alcohol Content

The camera zooms by one of the planetoids near the Little Prince’s home asteroid—a planet littered with bottles. Readers of the book will recognize it as the Tippler’s planet.

Other Negative Elements

Though the lessons taught by the Aviator—and by extension, the movie—have merit, they manifest themselves at times in unfortunate ways. And to learn them, the Little Girl winds up lying and disobeying her mother—sneaking off regularly to the Aviator’s house when her mom thinks she’s at home, studying. The fact that her mother really should lighten up a little is beside the point here: Kids—much to the chagrin of kids everywhere—don’t get to make that call. It culminates, apparently, in the Little Girl sneaking out of the house and trying to shimmy down a drain pipe in an effort to visit the Aviator in the hospital.

One day when the Little Girl is feeling a bit down, the Aviator tries to cheer her up by driving her to a local restaurant where she can get pancakes for her birthday. Never mind that the Aviator doesn’t have a driver’s license. Never mind that it’s not the Little Girl’s birthday. “They don’t know that!” he happily exclaims.

The book is always better than the movie.

So we book-lovers like to say, anyway, and in this case I think it’s true. Admittedly, it would be nigh impossible to equal Saint-Exupéry’s funny, lyrical and deeply poignant book. A little of his raw, honest wistfulness is missing here. And in wrapping Exupéry’s story inside another, more modern tale, the filmmakers unfortunately introduce moments of childish disobedience and rebellion.

But just because the movie isn’t quite as good as the book, that doesn’t make it a bad movie.

The book is weird—a quirky, personal statement by the author, not a book that probably anyone would’ve pegged as a best-seller. The movie shares that off-kilter sensibility. It’s a story within a story with yet a third story tacked on. It’s so quirky, in fact, that its intended distributor (Paramount Pictures) apparently opted to drop the film from theatrical release. Never mind that it has a 95% “freshness” rating on Rotten Tomatoes , or that it pulled in nearly $100 million from the countries in which it was released. It was only Netflix’s intervention—pushing the film to just a handful of theaters Aug. 5 alongside a release on its ubiquitous streaming service—that saved the film from American obscurity.

When asked about the film’s distribution woes, director Mark Osborne simply said, “Grown-ups are very, very odd,” a line from both the book and movie.

More important than all of that, though, is the fact that those who do find this little animated film will discover a story that encourages its viewers to take a flight of fancy. It asks us to dream a little with it. To imagine. Not everything makes sense in its world, and I think that’s by design. This is a movie that dares dip into the mind of childhood, where fantasy and reality may sometimes blur a bit.

And it reminds us of an essential truth: What is most important is invisible. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Movie Review: “The Little Prince”

There’s much to love in the latest adaptation of the beloved Antoine de Saint-Exupéry novella “The Little Prince”, an animated marvel by Mark Osborne, whose “Kung Fu Panda” (the original) was more visually inventive than you might remember.

A stunning blend of styles, from hand-drawn sketches to computer-assisted visuals with flashbacks made in gorgeous, textured stop-motion animation with models and tactile sets, it does justice to the book while updating its messages for contemporary audiences.

It’s also as easy to see why no studio figured it would find enough of an American audience to be worth putting in theaters. It comes direct-to-Netflix in the U.S., after having been a modest hit overseas. Stripped of much of its allegorical context, it is more of a children’s story than ever. But it’s a bit dry and somber for that audience, without nearly as much for adults to chew upon as the book.

A fable written by a French pilot and expat who fled his country after it surrendered to Nazi Germany, the book has invited graduate student dissection for 70 years.

The film is framed in a contemporary story, a little girl (the voice of Mackenzie Foy) and her stressed-out single mom (voiced by Rachel McAdams) fail to get into the Werth Academie, where “worth” is measured by one killer entrance examination question.

“What will you be when you grow up?”

The answer? “Essential,” as practiced and preached by the Werth headmaster (Paul Giamatti).

The over-scheduling “life plan” Mom moves them to a boxy suburb filled with modernist box houses and shrubs chopped into boxes for a summer of cramming for another shot at Werth. But the one house available sits next to a high-gabled ruin where a whimsically eccentric aviator (Jeff Bridges) resides.

He interrupts their plans by flinging a paper airplane through little Violet’s window. It’s the first page from an illustrated book, “The Little Prince,” about the aviator’s encounter, after a long-ago plane crash in the desert, with a bracing, inquisitive little boy from another planet. She rejects it, at first.

“That’s OK,” Bridges’ best old-man voice says in comfort.”Nobody understands it anyway.”

But eventually Violet, as such tales dictate, simply must hear more about this Little Prince, about the stuffed fox (James Franco) who was his friend, about The Rose (Marion Cotillard of “La Vie en Rose”), the Snake (Benicio del Toro).

This slow and somewhat stately cartoon reminds me of the recent animated version of Kahlil Gibran’s poetic novel “The Prophet,” a last-ditch attempt to capture the magic in a meditative, allegorical and philosophical book by using that most malleable art form — animation.

“It is only with the heart that one can see right,” the aviator lectures. The body “is but a shell.” “What is most important is what is invisible.” The words of a writer whose country has fallen to a great evil, whose world is under threat, seeking solace in the garret of the mind.

What is life once we’ve lost that child’s sense of wonder? Pretty empty, the aviator intones. Bridges was a good choice, as this character narrates the film as well.

“Grownups — they never understand anything by themselves.” They have forgotten “all about being a child.”

It was all more original when the book, translated into every language and still a best-seller, was new. Not so much any more.

Its remaining messages and its very style make “The Little Prince” more a nostalgia piece for adults than anything your kids would clamor to see and demand Happy Meals toys from. But Osborne’s film has its rewards, many of them our memories filling in what has been thinned out.

And in a weak year for adventurous original animation, it could compete with “Zootopia” for an Oscar, and actually have a shot.

MPAA Rating:PG for mild thematic elements

Cast: The voices of Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Paul Rudd, Albert Brooks, Ricky Gervais, Paul Giamatti, James Franco, Benicio del Toro Credits: Directed by Mark Osborne , script by Irena Brignull and Bob Persichetti , based on the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry novella. A Netflix/Paramount release.

Running time: 1:48

About Roger Moore

2 responses to movie review: “the little prince”.

I think “Kubo and the Two Strings” takes the Oscar. Laika does such great work. But “The Little Prince” is charming and very well done.

Not impressed with the animation I’ve seen in the “Kubo” trailers (seeing it Monday). It could happen, as Hollywood is in the process of utterly prostituting itself to the People’s Autocratic Republic.

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The Little Prince Reviews

Old-fashioned and trippy, a stumbling novelty picture with sparkling interludes and more heart than life.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 18, 2024

The ineffable may be effective in print and on records, but it isn't exactly the substance of musicals.

Full Review | Sep 27, 2023

Tender fable may appeal more to adults than kids.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 2, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 12, 2004

The Little Prince Director: Mark Osborne Screenwriter: Irena Brignull, Bob Persichetti Cast: Mackenzie Foy, Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, Riley Osborne, Paul Rudd, James Franco, Marion Cotillard, Benicio del Toro, Paul Giamatti, Bud Cort, Albert Brooks, Ricky Gervais, Jaquie Barnbrook, Marcel Bridges, and Jeffy Branion Distributor: Paramount Pictures Rated G | 108 Minutes Release Date: March 18, 2016 (U.S. limited release) | March 25, 2016 (U.S. wide release)

The Little Prince has been adapted. Again. But, for those who are tired of the onslaught of adaptations and sequels, the new film adaptation manages to do something quite “novel,” to turn a phrase. Director Mark Osborne has constructed something to surprise people familiar with the work without alienating those fans in the least.

The plot device of The Little Prince lay in the character of an un-named little girl ( Mackenzie Foy ), the only child of a single mother ( Rachel McAdams ) who’s fiercely dedicated to bringing her daughter up with the best opportunities available. Mind you, no one’s downtrodden and there’s not a lick of poverty in the film; rather, it’s as much an exploration of middle class upward mobility (that’s only too American) as it is anything else. Our little girl is bright, fun loving, and shy — nearly the inverse of our Little Prince. She meets the titular character through The Aviator, an ancient man played by Jeff Daniels who mirrors the spirit, life experiences, and adventures of the author of the original work: Antoine de Saint-ExupÃ©ry.

Rather than create a period piece, like the recent French-themed children’s classic, Hugo , the film uses this seemingly wayward series of characters to bring contemporary relevance to a story that is steeped in an early to mid 20th century world. Unlike so many other contemporary stories, there is no Facebook, no smartphones, no streaming media. All of these contemporary, digital facets are removed in order for the film to focus on exploring something quite nebulous despite its analogue nature – the end of childhood.

It’s here that The Little Prince strikes hardest. This is no Peter Pan story , with a never-grow-up mantra; rather, it’s a tale that plays with different approaches to adulthood. Rachel McAdams’s Mother character is young and healthy, but alone and spends her days surrounded by incompetence and thus is overworked at her white collar job. She seeks comfort in knowing she can optimise her child’s chances for adult happiness if she can just get her into the right Hogwarts-esque school , and use a Westernized version of the tactics and planning that have come to be known as Tiger Momminess , maybe she can rest easy. But, as is so often the case, “ the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men often go awry ,” and The Little Prince begins to pull at your heart-strings when they do.

And so, through a little recklessness, some curiosity, and some danger, our little girl finds her neighbor, the ancient man named The Aviator, and hijinks ensue. She’s transported through stories that her mother believes are unproductive to this world, and in it, she finds a safe space between the ideals of her two mentors.

The film does some truly interesting things visually. As characters step through one real world into a world imagined, the setting moves from today’s CGI into the classic children’s film visual style of stop-motion animation — to extraordinary effect. Winds blow and rustle through both mediums, and characters move both seamlessly and recognizably from one to the other. These characterizations, it turns out, are similarly tied to time. The Mother is financially independent and focused; a hallmark of second wave feminism, even if at times she comes across as a little misguided surrounding the emotion health of her lonely child. The Aviator and the Little Prince are at once loving, humble, and yet selfish; in the archetype of 20th century aristocrats. On top of all those traits, these males are gentle, tender even, without giving up any of their masculinity. In this way, The Little Prince delivers a story that has significant lessons about behavior and society for both girls and boys that break away from the sort of tropes we’ve come to know in other animated works delivered by production companies like Disney. Our little girl is not at all afraid to show how bright she is, using talents in maths and storytelling to great effect, and thus overcoming the myth that the two disciplines are opposites. Once out of her shell, she’s affable and never to be underestimated. And yet with all of this subtext going on The Little Prince doesn’t feel burdensome, as many message movies would; or even overstuffed. Perhaps the reason it can accomplish all of these things is due to the way the film deals with a rather difficult concept for its target audience: Loss.

Loss abounds in The Little Prince . The Aviator is a man who flew planes in the WWI era, and his loss is tied to missing his friend ( Marion Cotillard ), The Little Prince. The Mother is constantly fearing the loss of her child’s future, the Little Prince ( Paul Rudd ) misses home and the Little Girl is dealing with the loss of childhood, amongst other things. The film doesn’t deliver explanations about all of these things, but what it does is create a platform for families to start their own conversations about the topic, which is, perhaps, the most valuable attribute of works designed and written with children in mind.

This adaptation of the 1943 children’s classic, The Little Prince debuted on 5th March at the 2016 Boulder International Film Festival . The film features several well known actors and was originally released in Paris on May 22, 2015 (French language) and will be available to U.S. cinema viewers (in English) on March 18 2016 in limited release and then on March 25, 2016 in wide release.

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Review: ‘The Little Prince,’ a Lumbering Circus

A stage version of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic of children’s literature lands on Broadway but remains stubbornly earthbound.

By Elisabeth Vincentelli

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s “The Little Prince,” a megaselling classic of children’s literature first published in 1943, begins with a crash landing. Now, an adaptation of the beloved tale has made a similarly unfortunate entrance on Broadway.

The show is trying to juggle theater, dancical, circus, cabaret and everybody’s favorite: philosophical musing. It’s a mix that Cirque du Soleil, especially with the shows directed by the mastermind Franco Dragone, has fine-tuned into cohesive spectacles. And the company’s achievements seem even more remarkable in comparison to this underwhelming mishmash, which opened on Monday at the Broadway Theater.

This “Little Prince” is an uncomfortable hybrid, neither fish nor fowl nor sheep. When the childlike being (his age is unclear in the book, which is part of the point) runs into a stranded aviator at the start of the show, he asks, “Please, draw me a sheep.” Enter a flock of actors, prancing and dancing in shapeless outfits, and bleating like the sweet, lovable animals. This is when, a few minutes into a nearly two-hour-long production, the realization hits that this “Little Prince” is going to be a long day’s journey into whimsy.

Saint-Exupéry, a Frenchman who doubled as a pilot in the 1920s and ’30s, wrote and illustrated “The Little Prince” while exiled in New York during World War II. The book was first published here in 1943, which is why the manuscript is in the Morgan Library & Museum’s collection. Well, except for right now because it is on loan to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs for an exhibition, the precious artifact’s first trip to France in almost eight decades.

New York, for its part, is getting this stage version, which premiered in Paris in 2019 and has toured extensively since. It’s hard to fight the sneaking suspicion that we have been shortchanged.

The aviator (Aurélien Bednarek) and the Little Prince (the adult Lionel Zalachas, his blond, spiky hair making him look like Sting in the original “Dune” film) meet cute in the Sahara: one’s plane went down and the other is visiting from a tiny asteroid. As the aviator tries to repair his engine, the Little Prince tells him of his surreal encounters with a series of creatures on various intergalactic worlds, including a fetching rose (Laurisse Sulty), a number-crunching businessman (Adrien Picaut), a manipulative snake (Srilata Ray) and a wise fox (Dylan Barone), who delivers one of the story’s most famous lines: “What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

The book is a parable so rich in flights, ahem, of fancy that it has been adapted over the decades into plays, musicals, movies, operas, graphic novels and games. (Connoisseurs of Hollywood kitsch may fondly remember Stanley Donen’s film, from 1974 , in which Bob Fosse conclusively established that a snake can smoke and do jazz hands.)

The structure lends itself well to a circus-like, vignette-based show because each encounter can become a number, and you can string one after another with minimal interference from a traditional plot. Still, those who have not read the book — and even those who have — may wonder what the heck is going on, and the staging and performances are not strong enough to prevent the mind from wandering to such questions.

A central issue is the leaden onstage narration by Chris Mouron, who also wrote the adaptation and is a co-director with the choreographer Anne Tournié. Cutting an androgynous figure in a green do and a steampunk-butler suit, Mouron haltingly declaims her lines (in English) as if delivering Racine monologues, and effectively sucks all of the potential levity from the show. Like the best children’s literature, Saint-Exupéry’s book is bittersweet, and even touches upon tragedy, but it also has a poetic grace and many touches of surreal humor — few of which are in evidence here.

Instead the show lumbers from one scene to the next, with a few aerial feats and a too-brief apparition by the ring-like apparatus known as a Cyr wheel drowned out by too much bland dancing and way too much of Terry Truck’s recorded neo-Classical, New Agey score. Contributing to the mood — make of that what you wish — are Peggy Housset’s merely serviceable costumes and video design by Marie Jumelin that looks like a Photoshopped jumble of Salvador Dalí and René Magritte paintings, the head-trippy 1970s animated film “Fantastic Planet” and Roger Dean’s illustrations for Yes album covers.

Despite the performers spending time suspended about the stage, the production remains stubbornly earthbound. Until, that is, what turns out to be a somewhat perverse move: the single showstopping scene, in which Antony Cesar flies over the audience, happens after the curtain call, when there is no show to stop anymore.

The Little Prince Through Aug. 14 at Broadway Theater, Manhattan; thelittleprincebroadway.com; Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes.

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Movie Review: The Little Prince (2015)

Roberto Montiel
Movie Reviews
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--> March 21, 2016

Parents are beings anonymously bestowed with the responsibility of protecting their children from their own fears. Fear is thus transmitted and embedded into the habits and reflexes that follow all kids till, and if, they grow to parent their own offspring . . . and on and on it goes. That’s all part and parcel of parental love. They have been prepared for this responsibility as they entered adulthood. The main difference between an adult and a child is that where the latter finds wonder the former wonders what they’ve found. Adulthood starts as a form of chronic doubt, a kicking insecurity that suggests everything could, and will, be lost at any time and a hanging hope that everything could, and should, be gained at one precious point in time: They call it opportunity. And an adult’s biggest fear is to miss that opportunity, or worse, once missed, that their children will do so only to conform their self to the prospects of protecting whatever they haven’t lost so far. Life, adults learn, is a process of loss, “a losing game” (sorry Amy) . . . “and death is always near” (you’re welcome Jim).

The modern world, the modern city, the model of modernity upon which all civilizations were built emerged originally from this primal fear, which ended in the invention of comfort. Comfort at its prime is meant to isolate people in a gigantic bubble of sameness wherein nothing changes. Change is the ultimate form of discomfort. We know that. We don’t like it. Growth we like. But growth’s not change, no it ain’t if it’s meant to be intentional, which renders it development. Innovation, technological innovation that is (is there any other kind?), is the only thing left for an adult to be surprised, to dust their sense of wonder off, for they have learned that in life surprises should never be left to chance.

The Little Prince opens with an aerial shot, a sky-shot, Saint-Exuperian, of a city that then morphs into a suburb which very much resembles a computer’s insides seen from afar. Cybernetic guts look very much like a prototypical urban design. And then we get into the waiting room of a most respected educational institution where a prototypical mother rehearses with her prototypical daughter before they get into the academic tryouts that will put her right at the axis of success. The last child who tried, by the way, walks out almost in a state of catatonia with both his parents disconsolately crying and comforting each other to the terrified gaze of all present waiters. It’s, to her chagrin, The Little Girl’s turn. You can nearly predict the outcome, but not the way the resourceful mother finds around, for which she elaborates a complicated schedule through the summer so that the girl can prepare herself for success . . . again.

But chance is inevitable, even in the most computerized of environments. Just to the left (or right, depending on whether you’re inside or outside, quite a difference) of their recently purchased house there’s this weird little structure the mother doesn’t hesitate to remind the daughter was the reason behind how they could afford the place they’re in at the district which secured a place for her in the Academy that has just rejected her. The weird house is inhabited by a weirder old man who turns out to be an obsessed aviator doing his best to get his airplane going once again. Only the propeller flies . . . to The Little Girl’s house, from which a lasting bond and a beautiful friendship ensues: Just at the two opposite poles of a single life-span.

Yet the friendship doesn’t come without complications, particularly from the girl’s side. Predictably, the girl starts hating the elder loon that was a jiffy short of killing her and left a fault so big in her wall that Saint Andreas had no other choice but to kneel down and pray for them both. The fault, however, is quickly transformed into a crack and the crack into a threshold through which the girl enters into another world, a colorful one, the kind of world for which she wasn’t prepared for. Her mom was busy preparing her for success, for independence, for financial and emotional resilience, the kind that can bear any kind of abandonment and transform loneliness into a sign of absolute autonomy and accomplished unattainability: The true trademark of ultimate height. No room for friends here.

And how hard does the girl try not to make a friend — till she discovers friendship. This is what The Aviator (voiced by Jeff Bridges, “ True Grit ”) really opens for her. And for us, he opens a beautiful path towards a new form of suspension of misbelief, for in the back of our heads we cannot help but associate The Aviator with the author that drove us to the theater in the first place. The premise of The Little Prince goes on to propound: Let’s imagine that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was still alive, that he never got lost, but rather lost his way home and went on to disappear in the American suburbia, where he divested himself of all prestige and richness only to devote himself to one and only enterprise: Start his plane again in order to finish his journey. A person like him and a girl like our girl is a match made in heaven, or, better yet, up in the sky.

Perhaps greatest fault of The Little Prince was that it opened in Cannes almost next to 2015’s animation darling: “ Inside Out ” (not even Charlie Kaufman’s startling turn to animation, which gave us the kind of masterwork that will only get better with time, “ Anomalisa ,” was able to compete with it). And, technically, there was no competition. The 3D CG animation of The Little Prince is average at best. Mark Osborne, better known for “ Kung Fu Panda ,” could not get marble out of the bubbly figures modeled by computerized parameters. But then we see the stop-motion animation, and we cannot help but stop breathing in amazement. The sequences narrating The Aviator’s story, which literally (and literarily) pop out of Saint-Exupéry’s classic, give such a breathtaking rendition to the author’s dignified watercolors that it is difficult not to feel at times that the book itself has come to life. And then you have the little prince’s voice (who’s, incidentally, Osborne’s son Riley), which acutely conveys both the vulnerability and profound maturity of the iconic character. And then we have the laugh, the “meaty beaty big and bouncy” laugh that resonates in every corner of what is alive.

It is worth noting that the little prince’s fable is related in the movie as a memory, not as a fiction. This is crucial for the narrative purposes of the film, since this is the fresh memory of an old man remembering as vividly as a young child does. Do you remember the way you remembered as a kid, when your beautiful mind was still subject to the tricks of the thin line that shored your memory and your imagination — when fictions were as vivid as a memories are . . . and just as real? Liquid-like the one and grained-ground the other. Waves and tracks that time shall erase.

The use of stop-motion thus gives a three-dimensionality to Osborn’s film that is only occasionally hindered by the utilitarian use of CGI. The film’s main theme, however, is what is best represented of the little masterpiece on which it is based: Never forget. Because forgetting is easy once the journey towards adulthood starts, once one discovers how “essential” being comfortable has become — then one forgets how wonderful the “inessential” was in the first place . . . a slumber in the middle of a sunset, a flower in the middle of a garden, a rose in the middle of a tiny planet, a laugh in the middle of the desert, a star in the middle of the night. That’s what The Little Girl (voiced by Mackenzie Foy, “ The Conjuring ”) discovers in her journey back to her own childhood, to the right she has to it, to claim it and to name it.

The greatest contribution that the film does to the zillion adaptations of Saint-Exupéry’s timeless booklet for the soul (there are 16 only for the screen, not counting the ballets, operas, musicals, plays, novels, records, etc.) lies on the hearty script of Irena Brignull (likely where all the complexity and emotional intensity comes from, which reminds us of her equally passionate, but mediocrely directed, “Skellig: The Owl Man”) and Bob Persichetti (likely where all the Disney-like antics leaked out). The script for The Little Prince , I must say, is better than the execution — and the execution, I should add, is already quite good. The climax, is true, becomes a little bit too muddy and, aesthetically, even too cartoonish (i.e., the teenage little prince and his trip back to his planet, and to his former appearance, only now through the Botox of CGI, which takes away much from Antoine’s little guy) and is in a stark contrast with the lyricism of the stop-motion sequences dwelling inside The Aviator’s story along with, one thinks at first, the girl’s imagination — until we get to see hers runs as well by computer generated images.

In spite of it all, the little tale that runs parallel to the little prince’s, the little princess’, makes for a worthy retelling. The introduction of another perspective, a female one, does enrich the original lens and lead us to the place where all children get to see for the first time the end of their own childhood: Death. Death is perhaps the fear that neither adults nor children dare to name, for they don’t even get to fathom it. That requires a true grown-up. That is exactly what The Aviator learns from the otherworldly ruler during this latter’s intergalactic visit. That is precisely what the girl learns from the mundane neighbor during this latter’s inevitable exit. How to say goodbye and how not to forget the wonder we find when we discover something new in what we are used to remember. Baobye.

Tagged: friendship , imagination , journey , magic , novel adaptation

Roberto is a PhD recipient in Philosophy and Postcolonial Literature.

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Review: Halle Bailey keeps Disney's live-action 'Little Mermaid' remake from being all wet

An important note for those venturing back under the sea for Disney’s new live-action “The Little Mermaid” : There’s no newt playing a flute, carp on a harp, or chub rockin’ a tub.

Those concerned about a fishy revamp of the animated 1989 classic have good reason to be skeptical. The recent rash of Mouse House reimaginings has been mixed at best. But directed by Rob Marshall (“Chicago”) and featuring new songs by Alan Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda, the expanded "Little Mermaid" revamp (★★½ out of four; rated PG; in theaters now) is a different animal than the original, a family-friendly film that was only 83 minutes long. And while not everything goes swimmingly, Halle Bailey splendidly buoys this "Mermaid" as the naive underwater youngster with dreams of exploring the surface .

With her pals, loyal guppy Flounder (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) and loquacious seabird Scuttle (Awkwafina), Ariel collects whozits and whatzits galore in her collection of human trinkets from the bottom of the ocean – for real, girl, no one needs 20 thingamabobs. She sings about wanting to see what’s on land, and Bailey wins hearts in the early going with a powerhouse take on “Part of Your World.”

Halle Bailey: The new 'Little Mermaid' had to push herself 'past what I thought I could ever do'

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In this version , though, there’s a divide between mankind and the merpeople. It’s why Ariel’s dad, King Triton (Javier Bardem), warns her about surface dwellers, and when it’s clear that her wanderlust isn’t going away, he tasks exasperated crab Sebastian (Daveed Diggs) to keep an eye on her.

The love story at the heart of “Little Mermaid” is the same as it ever was: Ariel saves human dude Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) from a fiery ship incident and develops a serious crush. (So does he after hearing her gorgeous voice.) Enter Ursula ( Melissa McCarthy ), the conniving sea witch with designs on ruling her brother Triton’s kingdom. She strikes a wicked deal with Ariel to make her a human for three days, and the kid has to share true love's kiss within that timeframe or she’s Ursula’s forever.

'The Little Mermaid': What to know about Disney's live-action version

'We almost lost it': 'Little Mermaid' composer remembers fight for 'Part of Your World'

Ursula also takes her voice, but there's a different wrinkle to the spell in the new movie, which opens up the human world a lot more than the ’89 outing – and gives the prince an actual personality this time around, plus a song of his own (“Wild Uncharted Waters”). A welcome aspect of this retooled narrative is letting Eric and Ariel really get to know each other – even though she can’t speak – so that by the time of the romantic boat ride and Sebastian crooning “Kiss the Girl,” their feelings for each other ring true rather than haphazard.

Bailey is especially good at conveying her character’s evolving emotions with facial expressions rather than speech. That and the fact she can belt like a Broadway star will appeal to a new generation seeing “Mermaid” for the first time.

Prince Eric is the best Disney prince: Here's why we love the underrated 'Little Mermaid' hero.

Hauer-King is a solid Disney prince, who gets a helpful backstory in the updated film, but McCarthy is just OK as the sinister tentacled Ursula. The smoky-voiced performer is all over the place with a witches’ brew of styles, and her big number “Poor Unfortunate Souls" is missing the delicious camp of the animated version. (Also, while she’s still the main villainess, her antagonism feels muffled by the forced-in conflict between humans and sea dwellers.)

Get ready for a whole online discourse about the c computer-generated animal characters, though, for the most part, they blend better in the land and sea environments than their counterparts did in recent redos “The Jungle Book” and “The Lion King.” Sebastian doesn’t really look like any crab you’re likely to see on a beach, but Diggs gives him panache as Ariel’s supporting buddies have more to do here – even Scuttle gets a chance to rap some narrative exposition with the added tune “The Scuttlebutt.”

New 'Little Mermaid': What's the same, what's different in Disney's remake?

Maybe it’s because Menken and Howard Ashman's 1989 numbers are so deeply entrenched in culture, but the new songs, while fine on their own, don’t totally jell with the original tracks. And the live-action element stymies a song like “Under the Sea” – not only have the instruments been taken from the fish, a certain joyousness is missing, too.

As excellent a “Little Mermaid” as Bailey is, it was better down where it’s wetter the first time.

Ranked: All the Disney live-action remakes (including 'The Little Mermaid')

'The Little Mermaid': Halle Bailey and Jonah Hauer-King on Exploring Ariel & Eric's Love Story

Melissa McCarthy also talks about bringing Ursula to life and how her feet never touched the ground.

From director Rob Marshall and screenwriter David Magee , Disney’s live-action reimagining of The Little Mermaid goes on an adventure with a curious young mermaid, as she explores the world beyond the sea and interacts with humans for the first time. While on land, Ariel ( Halle Bailey ), who traded her siren song for legs bestowed on her by the sea witch Ursula ( Melissa McCarthy ), gets to know Prince Eric ( Jonah Hauer-King ) and the two form a connection that just might be strong enough to bring the kingdoms of sea and land together.

During this conference to promote the new film, co-stars Bailey, Hauer-King and McCarthy talked about the kinship Bailey felt for Ariel, what it means to be a Disney prince, Ariel and Eric’s love story, bringing Ursula to life, and the most memorable sequence for Bailey and Hauer-King.

Question: Halle, what was your reaction to learning that you’d be playing Ariel in The Little Mermaid ?

HALLE BAILEY: Oh, my gosh, I was just sobbing. I was crying. We had celebrated my sister’s birthday the day before, so we had rented an Airbnb and were coming home, unloading everything in work mode. And then, I got this call from (director) Rob [Marshall]. I don’t answer unknown numbers, so I was like, “Whatever, I’m not gonna answer it.” And then, my baby brother comes running to like, “Answer your phone!” I was like, “Okay.” So, I answered it, and then Rob was like, “Hello, I’m looking for Ariel.” I was like, “Oh, my gosh!,” and was just crying for the whole day.

Do you feel a kinship with Ariel, in any way? Do you have things in common?

BAILEY: Absolutely. I feel like Ariel truly has helped me find myself and this young woman version of me. It’s been five years of my life now, from 18 to 23. Those are very intense, transformative years, as you’re developing as a young woman. But I feel like especially these themes of the film and what she had to go through with her passions and drive and speaking up for herself, and how even though it may be scary, she went for it, those are things I really try to adopt and give to Halle now. She’s taught me so much, for sure.

Jonah, being a Disney princess is a big deal, but being a Disney prince is cool too. Are you ready for the world to see you in that role?

JONAH HAUER-KING: I don’t know if I’m ready for it, to be honest. It’s a great privilege. It’s a huge honor. What’s special about this is that the whole film feels very grounded in reality. The Disney prince and princess aspect is amazing. It’s fun and exciting. But even though we’re living in this fantasy space, the themes just feels really connected to the real world. But being a Disney prince is weird.

BAILEY: It’s so weird.

HAUER-KING: It’s definitely weird.

MELISSA McCARTHY: I just wanna say, instead of it being these caricatures, you guys have given them humanity. You’ve tethered that these are real people and that everyone walks with the same problems, the same troubles, and the same worries. That’s the big difference. They brought their humanity to the screen.

HAUER-KING: Thank you.

Ariel and Eric’s love story is an iconic one. Jonah, what was your favorite new addition to their story?

HAUER-KING: The friendship. Disney romances are always filled with that instinctive attraction to one another. We all wanna see that. But I think what was fun about this was looking at Ariel and Eric as two people who are kindred spirits that are a little bit restless, and who were behind the four walls of their respective castles, very much looking outwards and not in. What was nice about that was that it meant their relationship feels really earned. They both felt like they were teaching each other things. They were excited and fascinated by each other’s worlds, although they didn’t actually know it until the end. That was really lovely. It’s a really good message for what it means to be in love and what it means to be in a relationship, which is ultimately tied to friendship. That’s the fundamental thing of it. That’s why it lasts, and that’s what makes it special. So, that was really fun to explore, and it was easy because Halle is a riot, so we got on fine.

Melissa, what was the best part of filming this for you, and what was the most challenging part?

McCARTHY: The best part of filming was every little minute of it. It was the rehearsal. It was the crazy 60-foot clamshell. It was trying so desperately not to, every time Halle sang a melody because I didn’t want her to think I’m crazy, with tears running down my face. It was the whole process. I think we’d all agree that Rob Marshall set up this world that is similar to why I fell in love with plays. It feels so small, and yet it’s this enormous thing. It just feels like, if we all do our best, maybe we can make a show. It became so personal. Everyone was doing their best, and Rob was there, just swaddled in cashmere and quietly cheering everyone on. Everyone, from the actors, to the gorgeous camera moves, to the sound department killing it, to the costumes, it’s an appreciation of every human and all the moving parts that it takes to make a movie work. Having a cheerleader like that, I can’t even explain how fortunate I feel. I’m sure we all feel that. If the world had that kind of cheerleader running everything, we wouldn’t be so mad at each other. And the most challenging part of filming was just to do good for him and to keep up with this incredible cast.

Didn’t you say that you actually never touched the ground?

McCARTHY: I slipped on the clamshell occasionally, onto my back, but I was literally never on my feet. We were either up in rigs, or various different magical things. If you were diving, it was one rig. If you were spinning, it was another. I was never on the ground.

Halle, what was the most fun sequence for you to shoot?

BAILEY: There were so many moments that were so much fun to film. The funniest, most hilarious moment was with me and Jonah, when he was thrown in the tank with me, in his first few days on set. We had our first moment of me picking him up and saving him, and having to be in the middle of the rainstorm with the wave machine.

HAUER-KING: She literally had to save me because I was drowning.

BAILEY: We were both trying to survive that moment in the tank at Pinewood. It was so intense. When they turned on the thunder and lightning, and had the fires around us and the waves, it felt like you were in the middle of the ocean, actually in the middle of a thunderstorm. I was trying to look like a mermaid who does that all the time.

HAUER-KING: I was just passed out. I was fine.

BAILEY: And Jonah is so much taller than me, but I had to hold him up. We kept laughing about these boots that he had to wear because he kept sinking under. I said to Rob, “You don’t see the boots, right? Can he just take them off?” Because he kept stepping on my toes.

HAUER-KING: I was kicking her and breaking her shins. It was really bad. But Rob was like, “No.”

BAILEY: He said, “No, keep the boots on. It’s fine.” We were just dying in the water, the whole time and we had to look natural. That was the funniest moment.

HAUER-KING: It was quite bonding, as well, because it was early on. I basically almost killed her. I almost broke her legs.

The Little Mermaid opens in theaters on May 26th.

‘The Little Mermaid’ Review: Halle Bailey Rules The Sea & More As Disney’s Next-Gen Princess

The live-action remake of 'The Little Mermaid' is a dazzling spectacle that feels simultaneously nostalgic and new. The movie also solidifies Halle Bailey's reign as Hollywood's biggest shining star.

Disney is continuing to embrace all things live-action with a remake of the 1989 Disney animated classic The Little Mermaid . Nearly 35 years after the original film hit theaters, director Rob Marshall has made a splash with his live-action version of the fairytale. Halle Bailey makes the biggest splash of all as the beloved Ariel.

Halle is a magnetic screen presence. Jodi Benson’s voice has become synonymous with Ariel over 3 decades, but Halle creates an Ariel that’s entirely new and familiar at the same time. She balances Ariel’s youthful innocence and yearning for a life outside of the sea effortlessly. And let’s not forget about her voice. Halle’s “Part of Your World” performance will leave you with full-body goosebumps. You’ll want to give her a standing ovation right then and there.

The actress was unfairly criticized by racist online trolls who were upset that a Black actress was cast in the role of Ariel — who is a fictional mermaid . Not that she ever needed to prove her worth to any critics, but she simply is Ariel. The Grammy nominee embodies everything we know and love about the character. She is an inspiring role model for all, but especially for young Black girls who should be able to see themselves onscreen in roles like this. Whether she’s under the sea or on dry land (with no voice), Halle shines in every scene. She exudes effervescence and grace.

Once Ariel makes her deal with Ursula to become human, she crosses paths with Jonah Hauer-King’s Prince Eric again. So much of the land scenes hinge on the chemistry between Ariel and Prince Eric, which is even more complicated because Ariel can’t use her voice, but this is no feat for Halle and Jonah. Their natural chemistry simmers in every single scene. Similar to Halle, Jonah is a star on the rise. His turn as the dashing and surprisingly deep Prince Eric is a star-making role for the British actor.

Melissa McCarthy is an excellent Ursula when she’s onscreen, and she makes dives full force into what she’s given. Pat Carroll’s version of Ursula is so iconic, and it feels like Melissa’s live-action Ursula had her wickedness cut down. The movie needed more Ursula and more of her legendary manipulation. Javier Bardem is a talented actor, but the role of King Triton was not for him.

There were some complaints about the look of the underwater scenes prior to the film’s release. This is unnecessary criticism. Since the movie couldn’t actually film all of the scenes underwater, what The Little Mermaid’s team was able to do to recreate such a natural underwater arena is pretty astounding. Jacob Tremblay’s adorable voice-over work is able to triumph over any hate over Flounder’s look in the film.

The movie does go on a smidge too long. With a runtime of 2 hours and 15 minutes, the underwater exposition could have been shortened. The ending is stilted with a moment that feels awkward and forced, but overall the film is a cinematic victory. The musical numbers — the familiar ones and the new ones — are an absolute delight. If you’re a fan of The Little Mermaid , then you’ll respect the live-action version. The film is a fun and enjoyable spectacle the entire family will enjoy. The Little Mermaid swims into theaters on May 26.

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COMMENTS

The Little Prince movie review (2016)
It helps one overlook the narrative and philosophical repetition that the film is accomplished on a technical level as well. Most notably, the score, co-composed by Hans Zimmer, is a lyrical, lovely piece of work. It carries the viewer along, fluidly tying together the worlds of "The Little Prince" (both the girl's and the story of the ...
Review: Fanciful Classic 'The Little Prince' Is Turned Into Modernist
PG. 1h 48m. By Stephen Holden. Aug. 4, 2016. The masterstroke of "The Little Prince," Mark Osborne's reimagining of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1943 children's classic, is its side-by ...
The Little Prince
Sep 26, 2016 Full Review Allison Shoemaker Consequence Taken as one piece of art, as one beautiful, self-sustaining creation, this Little Prince is a thing of beauty.
The Little Prince Review: A Satisfying Adaptation Of A Kid Lit Classic
Now, "The Little Prince" has been reimagined once again, this time as an independently financed $80 million movie that sandwiches a hyper-literal telling of Saint-Exupéry's novella (told ...
The Little Prince
TheWrap. Aug 4, 2016. The novella's tale of the power of love is essentially a graceful story within that larger, clunkier contemporary story, beautifully rendered in stop motion. It's enchanting, painterly and timeless, befitting the iconic French classic, with a style that feels both fresh and appropriately reverential.
The Little Prince review
The Aviator in The Little Prince. Photograph: Allstar/The Weinstein Company. It is directed by Mark Osborne, whose credits include Kung Fu Panda and The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, but it is a ...
The Little Prince Movie Review
The movie is mostly about the Girl and what she learns from the Aviator, which is a shift from the book (it's more about what the Aviator learns from the Little Prince). It offers the same basic message, just told in a very different way, which may very well influence how audiences receive the film.
Film Review: 'The Little Prince'
Film Review: 'The Little Prince'. Antoine de Saint-Exupery's timeless classic gets a loving 21st-century makeover, especially in its handcrafted stop-motion sequences. Any animated feature ...
The Little Prince
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 20, 2017. Robert Roten Laramie Movie Scope. This film, directed by Mark Osborne is multi-layered, with a story about a writer, an aviator, the Little Prince ...
The Little Prince Review
The Little Prince Review. 8.5. The Little Prince is a loving, refreshing animated feature film take on the beloved children's tale. The beloved children's tale gets the animated feature film ...
Netflix's The Little Prince, reviewed.
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's 1943 novella about an aeronaut who meets a boy from outer space, felt, 70 years ago, like a dream—it took place in a world of unprocessed ...
The Little Prince (2015 film)
The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince; Italian: Il piccolo principe) is a 2015 animated fantasy adventure drama film directed by Mark Osborne and based on the 1943 novella of the same name by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.The film stars the voices of Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, Paul Rudd, Bud Cort, Marion Cotillard, Benicio del Toro, James Franco, Ricky Gervais, Paul Giamatti, Riley Osborne ...
The Little Prince (2015)
The Little Prince: Directed by Mark Osborne. With Jeff Bridges, Mackenzie Foy, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard. A little girl lives in a very grown-up world with her mother, who tries to prepare her for it. Her neighbor, the Aviator, introduces the girl to an extraordinary world where anything is possible, the world of the Little Prince.
'The Little Prince' Review: Classic Tale Becomes Half a Good Movie
Claudia Puig. August 4, 2016 @ 1:45 PM. While it's definitely family-friendly, and often visually stunning, the ambitious film adaptation of "The Little Prince" may leave adult viewers ...
The Little Prince
Movie Review. Matters of Consequence. From the opening shot of The Little Prince, we see a world preoccupied with Matters of Consequence.We see a city from high in the air, looking for all the world like a microchip. As the camera closes in, we see ant-like cars scurrying through the streets, people hurrying from place to place.
The Little Prince Movie Review
Our review: Parents say: ( 2 ): Kids say: Not yet rated Rate movie. THE LITTLE PRINCE does a very effective job of translating Antoine de Saint-Exupery's thoughtful and tender fable to the screen -- but tune out the forgettable Lerner and Loewe tunes. Older children are more likely to enjoy this parable, which may prove baffling or disturbing ...
The Little Prince (1974 film)
The Little Prince is a 1974 British-American sci-fi fantasy-musical film with screenplay and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, music by Frederick Loewe, arranged and orchestrated by Angela Morley.It was both directed and produced by Stanley Donen and based on the 1943 classic children-adult's novella, The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince), by the writer, poet and aviator Count Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ...
The Little Prince (2015)
Permalink. 9/10. A Grand Little Tale. anaconda-40658 8 April 2016. Warning: Spoilers. The Little Prince (2015): Dir: Mark Osborne / Voices: Jeff Bridges, Mackenzie Foy, Rachel McAdams, Paul Rudd, James Franco: Enchanting old school animation about the spirit of the younger generation and the struggle to maintain it.
Movie Review: "The Little Prince"
Movie Review: "The Little Prince". There's much to love in the latest adaptation of the beloved Antoine de Saint-Exupéry novella "The Little Prince", an animated marvel by Mark Osborne, whose "Kung Fu Panda" (the original) was more visually inventive than you might remember. A stunning blend of styles, from hand-drawn sketches to ...
The Little Prince
The Little Prince Reviews. Old-fashioned and trippy, a stumbling novelty picture with sparkling interludes and more heart than life. Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 18, 2024. The ineffable ...
Movie Review: The Little Prince
The Little Prince Director: Mark Osborne Screenwriter: Irena Brignull, Bob Persichetti Cast: Mackenzie Foy, Jeff Bridges, Rachel McAdams, Riley Osborne, Paul Rudd, James Franco, Marion Cotillard, B…
Review: 'The Little Prince,' a Lumbering Circus
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's "The Little Prince," a megaselling classic of children's literature first published in 1943, begins with a crash landing. Now ...
Movie Review: The Little Prince (2015)
The 3D CG animation of The Little Prince is average at best. Mark Osborne, better known for " Kung Fu Panda ," could not get marble out of the bubbly figures modeled by computerized parameters. But then we see the stop-motion animation, and we cannot help but stop breathing in amazement. The sequences narrating The Aviator's story, which ...
'The Little Mermaid' review: Halle Bailey keeps Disney remake afloat
The love story at the heart of "Little Mermaid" is the same as it ever was: Ariel saves human dude Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) from a fiery ship incident and develops a serious crush. (So ...
'The Little Mermaid': Halle Bailey and Jonah Hauer-King on ...
Because he kept stepping on my toes. HAUER-KING: I was kicking her and breaking her shins. It was really bad. But Rob was like, "No.". BAILEY: He said, "No, keep the boots on. It's fine ...
'The Little Mermaid' Review: Halle Bailey Rules The Sea In Live-Action
The live-action remake of 'The Little Mermaid' is a dazzling spectacle that feels simultaneously nostalgic and new. The movie also solidifies Halle Bailey's reign as Hollywood's biggest shining ...

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