Chicago – Leave it to the Europeans to inject some realistic drama into the art of animation. The recently Oscar nominated “My Life as a Zucchini” is opening in Chicago this weekend, and tells the story of parental abandonment, orphanages and finding family. Co-produced by France and Switzerland, it uses a familiar claymation stop-motion style for more emotional resonance.
Rating: 3.5/5.0
The English dubbed version is cast with familiar names – Nick Offerman, Ellen Page, Will Forte and Amy Sedaris – and that adds even more connection to the material. The film is an adaption of a novel by Gilles Paris, and pulls no punches in its presentation of a group of orphans, telling the back stories of their circumstances with substance abuse parents, drunken parents, abusive parents and deported parents. The kids are all misfits, and need to rally to each other to get through their challenges. The story suffers a bit through a tipped off ending,...
Rating: 3.5/5.0
The English dubbed version is cast with familiar names – Nick Offerman, Ellen Page, Will Forte and Amy Sedaris – and that adds even more connection to the material. The film is an adaption of a novel by Gilles Paris, and pulls no punches in its presentation of a group of orphans, telling the back stories of their circumstances with substance abuse parents, drunken parents, abusive parents and deported parents. The kids are all misfits, and need to rally to each other to get through their challenges. The story suffers a bit through a tipped off ending,...
- 3/11/2017
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
MaryAnn’s quick take… Simply a lovely film, with some of the most striking — and haunting — animation I’ve ever seen, and full of a remarkable and palpable warmth and humanity. I’m “biast” (pro): nothing
I’m “biast” (con): nothing
I have not read the source material
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
The animation style may be a bit of a tipoff: My Life as a Zucchini is not going to be an easy film. The haunting claymation features people with sallow faces and shadowed eyes on oversized heads, tragedy and pain made bloatedly manifest on their bodies. And these people are mostly children: orphans abandoned by life, which has turned them either bullying or neurotic or withdrawn or just plain sad. Some parents may feel that this is not a film suitable for children, but I disagree: kids’ sympathy (and that of adults,...
I’m “biast” (con): nothing
I have not read the source material
(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)
The animation style may be a bit of a tipoff: My Life as a Zucchini is not going to be an easy film. The haunting claymation features people with sallow faces and shadowed eyes on oversized heads, tragedy and pain made bloatedly manifest on their bodies. And these people are mostly children: orphans abandoned by life, which has turned them either bullying or neurotic or withdrawn or just plain sad. Some parents may feel that this is not a film suitable for children, but I disagree: kids’ sympathy (and that of adults,...
- 3/6/2017
- by MaryAnn Johanson
- www.flickfilosopher.com
It’s not at all clear why the protagonist of My Life As A Zucchini—a French-Swiss stop-motion film that’s one of this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature—is nicknamed Zucchini. The little boy’s real name is Icare, which doesn’t sound anything like the French word for “zucchini” (“courgette”), and he looks, as designed for the screen by director Claude Barras and his team, more like a potato, as other kids around him quickly and cruelly observe. However, Zucchini (voice of Erick Abbate) is fiercely attached to his nickname, which was bestowed upon him by his mother. That might be heartwarming, except that his mother, from what we briefly see of her in the film’s first few minutes, was an abusive alcoholic who regularly terrorized the kid—to the point where he accidentally kills her trying to escape her wrath. The backstories of...
- 2/22/2017
- by Mike D'Angelo
- avclub.com
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