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Actually, it isn't that bad at all. The animation is fluid, the artwork is colorful, and except for the fact that the characters are black on black and you can't always see the detail, it's somewhat fun. The main characters are in traditional African dress, which means you've got naked breasts and the hero, being a baby, is stark naked. That is a major stumbling block for the American prudish sensibility. But this truly is a children's film. The film begins in a village in Africa. Kiraku's mother is sitting in her hut when she hears our hero say from within her womb, "Mother! Give birth to me!" to which his mother responds "if you can talk in the womb, you can certainly give birth to yourself!" Something he promptly does, declaring his name to be Kirikou. The newborn is very inquisitive, asking about his male relations, all but one of whom have been eaten by the Karaba, the wicked witch who has put the entire village under a curse for some obscure reason. The single exception is his youngest uncle who is going to confront her at that very moment, so Kirikou goes off and saves him. Clearly, this is no ordinary kid. The film has the structure of a picture book for tiny tots. Each of Kirikou's adventures follow the same pattern, his tiny size and his native intelligence manage to win him through and save the day again and again. That is until he makes his great quest to find his grandfather, who just happens to be the old man of the mountain. Here he meets some animals, and they don't act anything like Disney's. The ending is a bit of a surprise. Ocelot's design is stunning. The colors are bright and the plants and the animals are really fun to look at. The magical fetishes move with a fluidity which works in contrast with the more realistic characters. The English translation fits the animation really well and the soundtrack is really well done. It shows what the French can do when they really put their minds to it. Eric Lurio
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Richard E. Schiff
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he
story of tiny Kirikou is one of those so-called hero's journey's one reads
about in anthropology class in college. It follows the traditional pattern
so perfectly, it's a wonder that the script needed to be written at all,
they just could have gone to the Joseph Campbell cookbook and done it in
their sleep.
