The Little Prince (Mark Osborne, 2015): France

Reviewed by Jonathan Lindgren, Santa Barbara Film Festival 2016, Arlington Theater.

Originally from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book comes this film. 7 years and $81 million later this movie is screened in Cannes 2015. I did not know anything about the Little Prince before the movie plus I had no information about the festival itself before entering this screening.

The film is about a little girl, played by Mackenzie Foy, who lives with her single mother who pressure the little girl to make the most out of her life. Demanding her to take the opportunity to come in to a school that the Mother missed. To have the best conditions to get in to the school, the mother moves them to a boring life where everything seems to be the same. Execpt from their neighbor, the Aviator, a crazy old man that makes new experiments every day. He is the total opposite from the other people around them. And of course, the little girl finds this intriguing. In the middle of the Aviators outsideness and the girls grey and boring life, they find each other through the story about the Little Prince.

I watched it with 3 grown up boys and we could not keep out mouth shut for the whole way home. So many questions, that did everything mean? What was the deeper meaning with this film? And I think that’s exactly that Mark Osborne (the director) wanted, that everybody is going to have their own view about this film. Is it about after death? About the society killing our creativity? Was it about family and love? Everybody has their own opinion and none of them are wrong.

As said before, I had no information at all about either the movie or the book. I had no clue who was the actors, who was doing the music or the director and I think that is the best way to see a movie, without expectation because I was totally shocked after I saw this. The music were perfect from Hans Zimmer, stunning stop motion animation and superb acting from actors as Paul Rudd, Jeff Bridges, James Franco etc. This is  absolutely a movie that I will see once or twice after this, and definitely a film I would recommend. Best film I was this festival, go and see it!