Fish and Cherries Productions

Synopsis: Somewhere in suburban America, there lives a little girl (Mackenzie Foy) whose life is planned out to the smallest detail by her mother (Rachel McAdams). But when they move to a new area to try and get her into a prestigious school, the girl finds an eccentric aviator (Jeff Bridges) living next door. As she gets to know him, she learns the story of a little prince (Riley Osborne) he once met, who traveled from his home asteroid to get some space from his love, a rose (Marion Cotillard). The story inspires the girl to explore her creative side for the first time, disrupting her strict life plan. But it appears the adult world wants essential cogs in the machine and has no time for such frivolousness, so the girl may have to make a choice of what happens when she has to grow up… and when the her new friend, the aviator, isn’t around anymore.

Review: I went to see The Little Prince with a lot of trepidation because this was one of my favorite books growing up. As a kid I was drawn in by the atmosphere and surreality and eventually got old enough to understand a lot of the metaphors and symbolism. To borrow a sentiment from the critic Doug Walker, I knew it was important before I knew what important was. And now we have the movie. Does it do the book justice? Well… that’s a tricky one to answer.

As the synopsis may have let on, this is more of a sequel to the book, focusing on the little girl and what she took away from the story of the Prince. I’m not going to lie, it was really off putting when it opened up with this girl’s audition for a prestigious school. It felt like the metaphors became a lot more blunt and a lot of the atmosphere was missing. The third act becomes a battle against an antagonist representing authority and conformity, when the original book had no real antagonist and was more about confronting internal issues (then again, it’s heavily implied that this is taking place in the girl’s head, so make of that what you will). It feels like they injected a lot of millennial tropes to try and make it appeal more to this generation.

But despite all of this… the messages it wants to convey are there and they are really important ones nowadays. Far too often, we have school systems and societal conventions trying to force square pegs into round holes and parents and children alike should know that they don’t deserve that. I will also applaud this movie for not chickening out on the hard stuff. It doesn’t shy away for death and treats it with the respect it deserves. There’s also a heated discussion between the girl and her mother that addresses a very uncomfortable topic head on and it really deserves props for that. In a bizarre way, despite some childish moments, this movie is a lot more adult than I expected.

I consider this movie a mixed bag, but I definitely lean towards the positive on this one. Despite some of my issue with it (the child actor for the little prince is… not great), it’s clear that the filmmakers have a real love for the book and included a lot of references that work well. The little girl is actually a good character for kids to relate to in order to get into the story and I usually don’t like characters that are only put in so kids have someone they can relate to. So while I may not have been as swept away as I would have hoped, I think a lot of other families will have a great experience. Also, if nothing else, this movie will get kids to read The Little Prince, which will make it all worth it.

Fun Tidbit: You may have seen trailers of this in theaters and then wondered what happened when it didn’t show up in theaters. The reason for that is that Paramount got cold feet and pulled the film a week before it was supposed to be released because they thought it would be a bomb. Some time later, Netflix grabbed the rights and the film finally saw the light of day.