Lumsdal Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

HeadlinesExotic Boring

Motompa Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

MartinHafer I recently reviewed a Japanese film and was left a bit indifferent by the film. It's a shame, as I really love animated pictures. Thank goodness I found "April and the Extraordinary World"...an animated movie that was delightful and really, really unusual. It isn't so unusual because it's in a steampunk world...a few other films have explored this same sort of material. However, the film offers far more in this odd alternate universe...and it makes the film worth seeing. Fortunately, it just debuted on DVD and is available through Netflix.When the film begins, you learn that this alternate tale of planet Earth diverged for our reality in the 19th century. Apparently Napoleon III was a bit of a nut and was intent on using his top scientist to create super-soldiers which the French could use against the Prussians. However, the experiments were failures and soon the French and Prussians made peace. His successor, Napoleon IV, was also a bit of a nut...and tried as well to use the top scientific minds to make super-weapons...but, oddly, soon all the scientists began disappearing...and so the world never experienced the gains of the 19th and 20th century. Electricity never really came into widespread use and instead the world was a dirty, deforested strange steam-driven place...and the French were part of an empire dedicated to war with the United States...a war for resources as the Europeans had completely exhausted their natural reserves.Time passes and soon the story soon involves a family torn apart in the 1930s. Napoleon V's agents have been searching for the scientists and a few of them are in hiding in Paris. Soon young April and her scientist parents and grandfather are all separated and the young girl is raised in an orphanage. A decade passes. April lives in a secret hiding place with her talking cat...yes, I said talking cat. Anyway, government agents are looking for April...and assume they can use her to find her family and the other scientists. Here's where it gets weird...yes, weirder than the talking cat! It seems that most of the scientists, including April's parents, are working with aliens...yes, aliens! What are they working on and how does April figure into all this? And, how does the cat become a hero? See this clever mind-bending film and find out for yourself.This project has an unusual pedigree. It originally was a graphic novel...which isn't unusual. But it was made and financed by French, Belgians and Canadians! The overall product is a very nice bit of escapism. I liked the story very much as well as the characters. My only complaint, and it's so small that I barely want to mention it, is that the characters themselves weren't drawn to the highest standard. The background and much of the animation was lovely...but April and the rest don't exactly look like Disney or Studio Ghibli quality. I found I was able to look past this.So who would enjoy the film? Well, most anyone except younger kids. It is not cute or child-oriented in any way and younger kids would probably be confused and bored. The youngest I'd show it to are kids about 10. Try it if you love anime, try it if you love more traditional animation, try it if you like sci-fi or try it if you just want to see something different. I'm glad I did.

datautisticgamer-74853 I have to say that when I went to the Gene Siskel Film Center to see this, I was quite bored at the start of the movie, but this movie had whipped me pretty hard awake with how engaging it eventually got. The animation style isn't necessarily unique, but is still very relevant to the strange utopian society of the 1940s and is a fabulous treat. The characters are hilarious or dark when you experience them, and remain fascinating even after some of them play their one role. I am especially fond of Darwin for eventually possessing the ability of "kittenvincibility", one of the best improvised words I have seen in an animated film. The story concept is among the most imaginative I have seen, though in execution there is one cliché moment that the story didn't seem to recover from, similar to what reviewers of Howl's Moving Castle noticed. Despite the flaws in the story, this is regardless a must-see film for anyone who has a taste in animation or science fiction, with its emotion and humor being loaded with brass. (I would recommend the English subtitled version rather than the dub.)

jmc4769 The steam punk alternate universe is the most interesting thing about this film. However, I'm not sure if it will appeal to adults who are not steam punk fans. The storyline with its lizard men, talking cat, and house that can both walk and swim (not a typo!) is reminiscent of what you would see in a children's cartoon on TV. I would have liked it better if the film had omitted these types of fantasy elements and stuck to science fiction elements such as the steam powered automobile and cable car. The talking cat provides some comic relief, but not as much as I expected from the trailer. As another reviewer mentioned, the animation is similar to Miyazaki. The people aren't drawn with much detail. The color palette is mostly shades of gray and rust...too much of those colors for my taste.

jdesando "Steampunk is ... a joyous fantasy of the past, allowing us to revel in a nostalgia for what never was. It is a literary playground for adventure, spectacle, drama, escapism and exploration. But most of all it is fun!" George Mann April and the Extraordinary World is an animated French adventure for the whole family (I recommend about 8 years and older) reminiscent of the fantastic 'toons of Hayao Miyazaki (think of Howl's Moving Castle). Leading us through an alternate steampunk history of modern France, April (voice of Marion Cotillard) is a little girl whose scientist parents in 1941 were abducted by the "Empire" to advance the cause, in this case by creating an immortality drug.With her charming talking cat(a product of the scientists' experiments), April spends her youth confronting malevolent forces like a driven policeman (Javert anyone?), a roguish boy, and nature itself. Not one moment of the 1 hr 45 min is wasted; each is crafted under the expert direction of Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci for maximum adventure and humanity (for example, love may be blooming and Grandpa Pops is feistier than ever).The graphics as well are outstanding in the steampunk visual style with the omnipresent steam and pipes, furtive surveillance rodents, bicycle-powered blimps, and suspended trolleys, among some of the creative expressions. Although great advances such as the use of electricity and oil have not been discovered, the above-mentioned steam objects awe April as she navigates this alternate universe of coal and wood.Conservationists shouldn't despair, for there are numerous references to the need to use coal, for instance, responsibly—already coughs are in the ambient sound. The suggestion that without the invention and use of atomic energy and fossil fuel, the world could have been stuck in an ecological disaster is an intriguingly benign take on modern energy.The extraordinary April and the Extraordinary World is nothing if not an invitation for girls to follow their dreams and create as their talents demand. For all children it is a call to be bold and responsible as they enter the real modern world.