I wanted to love this, I really did. I heard it was a masterpiece, a fresh and unique movie unlike anything else. And I can still see why people like it so much. But as a guy who's read the book about 15 times and for whom it remains an integral part of their childhood, I just didn't quite catch on. Don't get me wrong, the animation is magnificent, the music is solid and the comedy is mostly fine. The emotional moments also work to an extent, but I wasn't super invested.
I think the entire thing boils down to how much have changed for the book. You see, what I love about the book is the simplistic joy it brings, the terror of the family trying to escape, followed by the heartwarming adventures as they invade the farms. But in the movie, the animals are treated as humans: They have human jobs, live in humanlike homes and do human stuff. In my mind, the main reason for having humans and other equally intelligent beings coexist is to showcase how other species interact with humans, like in Toy Story. But here, the fact that they're animals doesn't really drive the conflict, nor does it change the way they're viewed by the humans. It's a shame, because I could so perfectly picture the story as told in the book, on the screen, there's some really solid potential there.
It might seem like I'm only complaining, and yeah, I kinda am, but I really wanted this to click with me, and the disappoinment I felt, while not enough to ruin the movie, still left somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe I'll rewatch this some day and realize what a masterpiece it is, but for now, I'm just left wishing that we'd got a movie faithful adaptation, or that I wasn't such a petty, nostalgia-blind fool, one of the two.
I think the entire thing boils down to how much have changed for the book. You see, what I love about the book is the simplistic joy it brings, the terror of the family trying to escape, followed by the heartwarming adventures as they invade the farms. But in the movie, the animals are treated as humans: They have human jobs, live in humanlike homes and do human stuff. In my mind, the main reason for having humans and other equally intelligent beings coexist is to showcase how other species interact with humans, like in Toy Story. But here, the fact that they're animals doesn't really drive the conflict, nor does it change the way they're viewed by the humans. It's a shame, because I could so perfectly picture the story as told in the book, on the screen, there's some really solid potential there.
It might seem like I'm only complaining, and yeah, I kinda am, but I really wanted this to click with me, and the disappoinment I felt, while not enough to ruin the movie, still left somewhat of a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe I'll rewatch this some day and realize what a masterpiece it is, but for now, I'm just left wishing that we'd got a movie faithful adaptation, or that I wasn't such a petty, nostalgia-blind fool, one of the two.