Hello All,
So funny story about this one. I came across this it by accident while looking for other show times, as it was playing as part of the family favourites series at the local theatre. For those who don’t know, they’re basically the cheaper films for families. Usually stuff already out on DVD, or going to be out on DVD soon. So why did I take a look at this one? Well, originally the poster for it caught my eye, and then once I did some digging on the film it looked to be pretty interesting, so I took a gamble. So did it pay off? Let’s find out together shall we?
Plot Summary - Set in late 19th century Saint Petersburg, the story follows a young russian girl named Sacha, as she decides to journey to the north pole to find her late grandfather’s ship and bring it home.
Pros - Honestly, knowing only what I’ve read going in, I can easily say I really enjoyed it. The story is refreshingly sentiment free, and Sacha probably has to be one of the best characters I’ve seen in quite some time. The writing is phenomenal as well, as they don’t pointlessly try and straddle her down with a love interest or stuff like that. Instead, they simply show her as a slightly sheltered girl who decides to try and venture out on a journey. She learns some lessons along the way, and overcomes tremendous hardships to achieve an amazing feat. The animation is quite lovely too, as it feels like a mixture of both animation and paintings combined.
Cons - The film kind of has a villain, but his motivations are weak, and he doesn’t get too much to do in the story with kind of both works and doesn’t work with the rest of the film. The film felt a couple of times like the framerate was weirdly off near the beginning, and the english voice cast while mostly great, has a few weak points that kind of pulls you out of the story just a touch.
Final Score - 9/10
Overall, It’s a tremendous film that I highly recommend you see when you can. Speaking of which…..
So you might’ve noticed that I marked this review for 2016. Why? Well, because that’s the year it got any sort of release here in north america, and while I did see it here in 2017, that was as part of a specialty series so it kind of doesn’t count. With other films in this kind of situation, I tend to mostly just go by the year they were available in wide release near me. It’s kind of a cheat in certain situations, but this film also counts as 2016, because this year it’s coming out on DVD. It actually came out on DVD today in fact (if my sources are correct) so if my review for it has sparked any interest in you watching it, it’s definitely worth the risk.
Next: Monster Trucks - Yeah, it’s actually going be Monster Trucks this time, so for those of you who confused this with A Monster Calls, now you’ll read what I think of it.
Links: (Yeah, I’m still going to try and update this when I can. It gets uglier every time I look at it.)
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Until next time, I’ll see you folks at the movies.
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