Angelo is 10 years old. Forgotten on a motorway rest area, he must at all costs reach his grandmother, who is very ill. Delving into a forest populated by mysterious beings, the young adventurer sets off on a crazy expedition, whirling from one graphic universe to another.
(A text by Laurine Chiarini, from the Annecy Animation Festival)
Stuck between a big brother in adolescence and a little brother who is still a baby, Angelo dreams of being an everyday adventurer. Bad news arrives one morning: Angelo’s grandmother, his beloved Grandma, has had a stroke. The family quickly piles into the car and takes a break along the way, forgetting Angelo at a highway rest area. As night falls, the surrounding forest thickens with shadows and mysteries, into which Angelo sinks. Then begins a crazy epic populated by fanciful characters, whom the little boy will help defend their beloved nature against the odious Ultra. Will he arrive in time to join his Grandma?
In a family, it’s not easy to be in the middle. Fortunately, Angelo can count on his imagination: his screaming little brother becomes a roaring tiger; the milk he pours into the cereal turns into a bubbling river and his teenage big brother is the anti-hero Debilman. The voices are served by a choice cast: the mischievous grandmother who cheats at cards and teaches her grandson to do arms of honor is played by Yolande Moreau. Fabrice, a transgender squirrel rejected by his family who dreams of being a bird, has the voice of a singer Philippe KaterineAnd Jose Garcia lends his to Ultra, a villain halfway between Grou, from “Despicable Me” and “Mini-Me”, XXS version of Dr. Hell in “Austin Powers”.
The young audience that the film is targeting allows its designers to have fun, evolving in a broad range between primitive gags and inventions that will appeal just as much to adults. The car’s GPS, in the midst of an existential crisis, claims that “It’s the journey, not the destination that matters” to the father completely lost on small country roads. Hopping on whooping mushrooms, Angelo clashes with a charlatan swamp spirit and an ogre turned failed real estate agent, while his daughter Zaza rallies the inhabitants of the magical forest with cries of “resistance!”, the raised fist. Often, creatures in children’s cartoons err on the side of anthropomorphism. Here, the sweet mixture of eccentricities and oddities against a backdrop of ecology achieves a result which is likely to amuse a wide audience.
3.5/5 ★
Next November 14 at the cinema.
More information on “Angelo in the Mysterious Forest”
Trailer for “Angelo in the Mysterious Forest”
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