Movie Review: 'My Life As A Zucchini'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- It's not that he is a zucchini. It's that he wants to be called Zucchini, so much does he despise his real name, which is Icare.
He's the young protagonist of the animated comedy-drama, My Life as a Zucchini, which was Oscar-nominated as Best Animated Feature.
It's easy to see why.
My Life as a Zucchini is a work of colorful stop-motion animation – a painstaking process if ever there were one – that focuses on a big-eyed, blue-haired nine-year-old whose mother suddenly passes away and whose father is long gone from the scene.
The boy feels that he was somewhat responsible for his mother's passing, about which enough said.
As an orphan, he is taken by a kind policeman to a group foster home in the countryside where he is to live with a half-dozen abandoned, neglected, or abused orphans his age.
It is, at first, a somewhat hostile environment, especially for any newcomer, which Zucchini certainly is. And, yes, he's bullied right away. But he also develops a crush on the new girl at school. So there are ups and downs.
The other kids do evolve into a new family of sorts for him, and, in this poignant celebration of empathy and friendship, he gets the chance to learn to love and trust all over again and to learn to experience laughter and joy.
But mostly what he and the other resilient kids do is heal.
The soulful script, based on a Young Adult novel by Gilles Paris, is startlingly direct at times, as the naturally curious children explore in conversation what all children explore either to themselves or out loud, including adult sexuality and death.
But the film manages to be frank without being overly graphic, and the gentle whimsicality is charming throughout.
My Life as a Zucchini should be appropriate for any kids at least as old as the kids being depicted. To say nothing of appreciative grownups, who need not just be chaperones.
Whatever else the Swiss-French co-production (in French) does or doesn't accomplish, it will be seen as a trailblazer in its willingness to go to places that few animated movies are willing to explore. But the tweaking of taboos notwithstanding, it's the film's tangy bitter-sweetness that stays with you.
The debuting Swiss director and co-writer (with Celine Sciamma) is Claude Barras, who employs an admirably light touch in what could have been heavy subject matter, and who makes sure to allow the remarkably expressive faces of the children to carry the ball.
And in many places, parents and guardians will have the option of seeing either the subtitled version of the barely-70-minute film or the dubbed English version with such familiar voices as those of Will Forte, Nick Offerman, Ellen Page, and Amy Sedaris.
You make the call.
As for us, we'll raise 3 stars out of 4. My Life as a Zucchini sounds like a side vegetable, but satisfies like an entrée.
