The Little Prince (2015)

Honestly, I didn’t really care about this movie. But the poster said it was the official selection on Cannes Film Festival. So this film wasn’t just any film. Adding it – my friend, Stefanie was really excited with the movie. She told me that the film was based on a novel or a children’s book (you choose) with the same title. Well I don’t really know the book, I already bought it but still waiting for it to arrive at my doorstep. Maybe I’ll make an updated version of the review after I have read the book. So as Stefanie told me, I’m was thinking about the book to be as smiliar as Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist – both book hit people on the dreamy-psychology side.

From the technical side, this film didn’t achieve many modern improvements. But what actually made me excited was the stop-motion figures vs the animation. They were fun to watch.

Well, from the writings. I have to remind you that I haven’t read the book. I only read the first paragraph of the book’s plot in wikipedia. I won’t compare it drastically.

The story was bookend with another story from outside the novel – the story of the little girl and her mother. The pilot was old, but still kicking. We learn much more of the book’s message from this point of view – making it simpler and easily identified. I don’t know if you will agree with me, I see this film as the sequel of the book.

I’m going to discuss the ending of the film so..

SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER!

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Elisa told me something depressing but yet interesting. We discuss the fate of the girl after she fell from the second floor.

Elisa brought up, that the film ended with the girl’s death and the conclusion of the film is the girl is in Heaven – living up her dreams with a simple good ending. We can see this by looking at some hints, we sometimes ignore them (even I). For example, the pages at the end of the film were not taped.

But, I don’t like the film if it has a bad ending. So I concluded that the film DID have a good ending. Because as a filmmaker, WE OFTEN TEST OUR AUDIENCE – either they are optimistic or pesimistic people.

Here’s my argument. This film is an animation film. So the movie used imagination rather than realism. I believe that anything could happen in animation. The filmmakers have more possibilities. I even believed that the ending of the film did happen: the girl search the little prince and restored the stars.

SPOILER ENDS HERE!

But, believe me, for someone who needs something to cope with the hardship of life, this is a film for you.

The Verdict:

The Little Prince (2015) is full of fresh ideas and rewriting the whole story into a new modern one with an ambiguous ending (you decide).