Lili à la découverte du monde sauvage

Beautiful South Korean animation, talks about maternal love, the most beautiful and captivating thing, a little bit boring at first, then poetic and exciting, simple and efficient...

I put this on for my not-quite-3-year-old son.

Within the first five minutes, it features:

• The horrors of industrial chicken farming, including filth, depressed chickens, and mass death of chickens.
• A wheelbarrow of corpses (of chickens), with the protagonist tossed on top.
• A mass grave (of chickens).
• A homcidal animal attack (which, okay, animal stories always have these).
• A physically and verbally abusive patriarchal male figure (a rooster) attacking the protagonist... and then, when she stands up to him, he beats her down again and her resistance effectively achieves nothing but more abuse.

I am not a believer that kids' entertainment needs to sanitize out all the ugliness in the world, but... neither does it need to be this nasty. But that's the first five minutes. It's less brutal later on, mostly, and there are nice moments. Unfortunately, that's not the end of the cartoon's problems.

The other big problem is the plot arc: it's arguably sexist to have a protagonist whose primary character development is, "She becomes heroic by learning to make the sacrifices involved in being a good mother." When you're aware of the social setting in which this film was made-where lots and lots of women are similarly consigned to defining themselves primarily as mothers, to the point where they're even called "_______'s mom" instead of their own names, there's something a little off-putting about it.

Not that there's anything wrong with parenthood being valorized: it is a heroic act in many ways, at least when done right. But when's the last time you saw cartoon about a male animal being heroic by making the private, quiet sacrifices of being a good dad? Not even in this film do we see male characters making comparable sacrificing in the name of fatherhood, which... well, it's kind of hard not to notice. (It's also hard not to notice the duckling she adopts is a male character: heaven forbid a female character sacrifice and struggle to parent a *female* child.)

In sum, the cartoon struck me as heavy-handed, tin-eared, and sexist.

I watched this wonderful Korean animation with my mum and by the end we were both uncontrollably crying.

A short little plot of the movie: A hen escapes the barn and somehow becomes the 'mother' to a duckling, they bond beautifully but later their differences create tension and conflict.

This movie has a nice soundtrack and the vibrant colours and settings of nature are really appropriate for a kids movie but this is so much more!

The pictures sort of have an anime feel in the action scenes and is usually accompanied by music for highly emotional scenes. It's hard not to feel your heart sink at these moments. If you want your kids to watch it with you then be warned: there will be tears so be careful not to take the little little ones so that they aren't wailing about how sad and yet beautiful the ending is.

The post-movie feelings are hard to describe because you can't help feel that it should've ended better in terms of the story line but I think that's what the real preciousness of the movie is, it really captures the rareness of ultimate love and sacrifice that you really have to appreciate what happens.

A definite must-watch and I assure you watching it as a family is incredible.

People seem to think this is original, but it is much like Doggie Poo and the English dubbing is painful at best. I really wanted the hen to get killed off pretty early on. She is pretty much a very dim stalker. I watched it and just thought of movies like Single White Female. As far as being more real, not at all, you want a hardcore animation, Watershed Down, Plague Dogs, When the Wind Blows, or any number or movies. This one was very basic and half though out. I had chickens far braver than this one and far smarter. This movie just bugged me on so many levels. It was like "are you my mom" but if the mom had no clue if she was, or like the ugly duckling if the duckling's mother was a psycho chicken. Young kids may like it, but nothing was good in this film other than some animation. There is far better Korean animation out there. Also I just watched Song of the Sea and I was a bit sad during parts of it, but this movie had me looking at the clock and never once felling any emotion (and as I said I had both chickens and ducks as a kid and think there were fun to have around).

Leafie looks nothing like any American animated film. It carries out its story in a way unlike American animation as well. American animated movies are almost always kids' movies, and there's an implication that the story and characters should be similarly childish.

Leafie, hailing from South Korea and based on a South Korean novel called "The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly", doesn't seem interested in stooping to the six-year-old demographic. There's a lot in the movie for kids to love, but it's also a bit scary, and the story isn't as neat and orderly as one expects from a kids' movie. Leafie is bittersweet, like real life, which makes it both interesting and hard to watch. Tears were in my eyes at one point, although I never started sobbing.

Leafie the hen was born on a farm but wants to escape. Over time she has a child of her own who has different abilities than her. It's frustrating for mother and son that they are different enough for the other animals to make fun of them. Parenthood and belonging are major themes; "Leafie" is a blend of Animal Farm, Finding Nemo, and a little bit of The Lion King.

It's all a bit predictable. Some parts throw you for a loop but it's usually not that hard to guess correctly about what's going to happen next.

There are some brief jokes involving toilet humor, which weren't done in a clever enough way to make me appreciate them. They're more explicit than the toned-down toilet jokes you find in Finding Nemo or The Lion King, which is probably why I found them so distasteful.

I appreciate seeing an animated movie that doesn't look like the homogenized "Pixar / Dreamworks / Disney / Sony" style. Vibrant colors abound, and it seems like the movie was animated mostly using two- dimensional techniques. It never made me as happy as "Ernest & Celestine" did, and I liked the way that movie looked even more than this one, but "Ernest" was never as sad as "Leafie" either.

Although the movie always looks *different*, it doesn't always make the best use of its style. Very few scenes blew me away with their visual style: Frozen, The Lion King, Ernest & Celestine, and Wall-E have "Leafie" beat when it comes to beautiful artwork.

I'm glad I watched this; there are too many sequels and too little heart in American animated movies. Characters don't have the nuance they do in Finding Nemo, and there's not enough humor to hold together the passable, but touching plot.

I suggest watching it in HD - it was released on Blu-Ray in South Korea (Region A) and Germany (B). But once you're done, look up the original ending. It's a mandatory part of the experience, and it's a shame that they cut it from the film. You'll understand why it was cut once you watch it, but it contains major spoilers, so wait until you watch the movie first.