Embarrassingly, I’ve never read the novel despite having studied in France. In my defense, I simply never felt much of a need for it since I’d already absorbed so much of it through cultural osmosis. It is pretty odd that despite it being one of the bestselling books ever in history, this is the first feature film adaptation of the material. Though it was made with the support of French studios, this also feels very much like an American production as an English-language film with familiar Hollywood names providing most of the voices.
As expected, part of the film is an abbreviated retelling of the story in the book. The frame story is about a little girl who is raised by a single tiger mom. So determined is the mother to ensure her daughter’s success in life that she has every minute of her life planned out far in advance. While her mother is busy at work, the girl discovers that her neighbor is an aged aviator, the very one of the story in the book and she finds great joy in reading his writings. The mother eventually learns that the girl has been shirking her studies and forbids them from spending any more time together. The girl is also dismayed when she finds that the story ends with the seeming death of the Little Prince. Yet that is not the end of this story. When the aviator is hospitalized due to his ailing health, the little girl realizes that she must be the one to seek out the Little Prince and get his help for the aviator.
The first part of the film is decent but predictable stuff that relies entirely on the strength of the book itself. It wasn’t until the second part that I perked up and realized that there is something more substantial to this than a depiction of the original story. The little girl’s part in it expands from being a mere framing story to a continuation and even an update of the original for modern times. I think The Little Prince endured the test of time because, like many other such stories, there’s more than a hint of darkness is what is ostensibly just a children’s tale. I’m pleased to say that this adaptation brings the familiar characters to some dark places with a portrayal of a possible future of the Little Prince himself that may well horrify fans of the book. Setting the themes of the book as a struggle of individualism and imagination against a joyless life of conformity with fixed rules isn’t exactly the height of originality but it works well enough for this film.
Its weakest point is probably that it’s an incongruous mix of American and French influences. The sequences that actually recount the story of the book seems to have been made with stop motion animation, using models that evoke origami puppets. That’s the perfect look to pay homage to the original illustrations by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The portion about the little girl and the aviator however use the same bog standard style that is every American animated film these days. That’s not too bad but it’s bewildering how this world looks so American and yet all text that appears is in French. Having the mother move them to a specific house in the suburbs is a very American thing to do for example. There’s nothing in their dialogue or their cultural references that suggest France. I’m not sure why they couldn’t go all in with one way or the other and settled for this strange mix.
Still I enjoyed myself and I’m pleased to finally, more or less, know the original story in full. While this isn’t exactly high art, it turned out to be a better film that I’d have expected and is a more than worthy adaptation of its source material.