Manou the Swift

The first 5 mins is clever and cute, visually impressive and inventive, the world from inside an egg, and then it just falls into bog standard badly written tropes about fitting in and finding yourself, crowbarring in problems (don't flap your wings, you should be able to swim even though your feet are claws etc etc) to make a story that isn't really there. The animation was pretty good, especially the light and background scenery, but the over long race scene outstays it's welcome as the animation team run you through every trick they can think of till it became annoying. The A list voice cast failed to engage. I could see what they were going for but they phoned it in, and really the characters on paper weren't that interesting so they didn't have much to work with.

It was nice to see a slow-moving but sweet and interesting topic from an unfamiliar animation studio, LUXX production (which is based in Germany, but apparently the original vocals are in English?). It managed to weave a lot of great information on birds into the plot without forcing it too much. And the French Riviera setting was beautiful, and entirely from the perspective of the birds - humans play only a very marginal role.

Sebastian's Review: 8 Stars Sienna's Rating: 7 Stars Paul's Rating: 7 Stars.

I'm no CGI artist, I have no idea how they do it, but some of the scenes in this movie are absolutely beautiful. On my 4k TV it looked real, breathtaking.

Unfortunately that's the end of the good. It's all downhill. The actual bird animations were very very cheap, pardon the pun. In some parts you can clearly see how they couldn't manage to animate what they wanted to so shot a different angle or used shadows. Terrible.

The sound was awful. The music didn't fit. In most movies the music is almost unnoticeable, you don't realise the ambience it's creating, it's part of the movie. Here, it's clunky, as if they only had 2 hours left to throw it in at the end, and no budget left either.

The acting... I'm confused. I know the two main stars can act, but here... It was awful. As if they've walked into the studio, read their lines, and the directors gone "yep, cut, thanks for that." And then all the parts have been shoehorned in, with terrible pauses between lines. No emotion, no timing, no conversation.... Just a collection of clips that don't work together. It doesn't even sound like they're in the same room.

This will never become a classic, it will be in the bargain bucket or the bin.

Manou the Swift or Swift is an animated story about a swift named Manou (voiced by Josh Keaton) who is raised by seagulls and struggles to fit in. He then goes through a journey in discovering his true identity.

Swift benefits from a feel-good story as you can see the struggles of growing up and trying to identify with a group who you do not feel a part of. I enjoyed some of the relationships Manou had such as with his brother Luc (voiced by Mikey Kelly) and his love interest Khalifa (voiced by Cassandra Steen).

Where the film lacks is the animation and storyline. The storyline, while feel-good, does nothing to differentiate itself from other stories in the past. While I did enjoy it, I didn't feel like it wasn't something I had not seen before. Furthermore, aside from Manou learning his identity, there is no other major plot point. It feels a lot longer than it should be despite only being 90 minutes. In addition, this is a lower budget animated film and it does show. It feels like a made-for-tv animated film. I would rate this slightly under average - 4/10.

It is the French coast, Nice. Manou's egg ends up on the ground and cracked. He manages with his little wings to crawl up a rock and finds a nesting pair of Gulls. Mama Gull takes him under her wing, the pair end up raising this small Swift as if he were a Gull, along with his Gull brother that hatches shortly.

But he can never be a Gull, he can't soar, he eventually accepts his fate and acts like a Swift. His big moment comes when the migratory group encounter bad weather and he leads them to safety.

So, other than a cute cartoon it has a message of acceptance of those who are not like you. And that discarded individuals should not give up, there is a place for everyone if we find our real talents.

It was fun to watch but pretty innocuous. We watched it at home on DVD from our public library.