A Kisfiú, a Vakond, a Róka és a Ló

A beautifully animated snowy, melancholic tale that would very much like to be a modern-day Little Prince, but annoyingly overwrought in that "Paulo Coelho way", full of recited platitudes and big life truths pulled out of thin air instead of dialogue. (2022.12.30)

The story of how a boy is lost and meets a mole, a fox, and a horse, and they start philosophizing together on their way home, and if they haven't frozen to death, they are still out there philosophizing... The authors seem to have been given the task of cramming as much life wisdom and deep thoughts as they could into thirty minutes, and they didn't really bother with the fact that for an idea to have power, there needs to be some sort of context and background. Half of the life lessons that are spoken here are kind of random and have no effect on me as a viewer. It’s a short film that tries terribly hard to sell me as much as possible in a limited space, but it doesn't do a very good job of it, although the themes it wants to discuss are certainly very interesting and powerful. The filmmakers just shoot them at me and, sadly, most of them fail to hit the mark. Plus, due to all the philosophizing, there's not much time to build the story itself, so it feels very shallow, as do all the supposedly strong relationships between the characters we're supposed to believe in and who are supposed to speak to us emotionally, which, unfortunately, doesn't really happen much. What I definitely consider a positive is the gorgeous animation and great score. But, in combination with the above, it’s not enough to make this more than a mediocre experience for me. 5/10 (2022.12.27)