Mumins an der Riviera

Just for you. Didnt want to break my promise.

legit the only movie that gave my child nightmares, besides when the horse dies in the neverending story.

A beautifully animated but rather baggy attempt at bringing the classic Tove books to life. Careful attention has been paid to replicating the style of the original inkwork - and with a lovely muted palette, the background scenes are by-and-large stunning, especially in Moominvalley itself.

Unfortunately it meanders so aimlessly as a plot that by the hour mark it feels quite exhaustingly disconnected like a flimsy Saturday morning cartoon stretched beyond its natural limits. Plaudits to be handed out for its dedication to the original more-satirical Moomin comic strips but in doing so whilst sticking to a languid and simplistic pace it ends up too babyish for adult audiences and too bizarrely adult for children's audiences. A bit of a beautiful muddle really that leaves it as a strange European curio rather than a vital bit of Moominery and really a damned shame.

Visually the cartoon was OK, but it totally ignored any number of excellent plots from the originals.

Had pirates, except they behaved absurdly. And did not fit.

Then sent them to the Riviera, where they were obviously out of place.

A complete botch.

Why does no one in the world of commercial cinema accept that a successful original is best treated with respect?

The movie is so bad I reactivated my IMDb account just to write this review.

I suppose this film is for serious Moomins fans. The only positive thing I can say is the colour and painting are beautiful.

The story is not even continuous. The voice acting is worse than that of kids TV. I was of high anticipation of the film, and I really wanted to care for these characters, but half way through the movie I just gave up. These characters are too bohemian for my liking, and too forgiving for everything just to pick up the pace of the movie.

So in conclusion, I hate this film.

Beautiful backgrounds and colour design, but everything else was bad. I didn't like the movie much at all.

The script, voice acting and pacing/storytelling were especially bad. Also the character animation was mediocre and lifeless.

It desperately needed a proper English localisation & casting/voice direction, or just leave it in Finnish/Swedish with subs.The English voices were fairly weak, especially Moomin himself.

I thought the script was lazy and messy - the way they throw in Tove Jansson quotes/jokes with no context or the wrong context annoyed me so much. They didn't turn the material into a movie script at all.

Note: I'm a big Moomin fan AND very critical of animated movies so maybe other people would like it way more than me?

P.S You know what? If you're a Moomin fan, the movie -IS- worth seeing, for the opening titles with Snufkin alone.