Boy & the World (2015)

(Flash Review)This is a uniquely animated film, with crude yet charming illustrations, and is rather original as it has zero dialog. Just appropriate music and some sound effects. The main story is simple yet also hard to follow, of a boy in search of his father that left him at a young age. The boy leaves home and goes on an adventure from sunny cotton fields to the big city. He starts off carefree and dreamy-innocent and as he learns about the world, he sees many bad things going on with it. Que many heavy-handed scenes of big city = bad and polluting factories = evil towards people and the planet. Not that these aren't noble causes but they became the focus over his father search. They were told in a shallow and well-worn manner and for a couple minutes inserted in real deforestation footage. That point was made loooong before; real footage not needed and took me out of the film's neat atmosphere. Overall, nifty visuals and creative ways to visualize most every scene. Fun illustrations but the story could use finessing.

Don't let the colorful animation of Boy and the World to distract you from its deep obscure meaning. From the beginning, I thought this was going to be another animated movie for kids but boy was I wrong. Boy in the World is about a Brazilian boy whose life is destroyed. His dad leaves to go find work and the boy want to go find him but instead he finds a terrible world where he is lost. The boy is more of a symbol in the movie, he represents the people of Brazil and how they have suffered because of modernization and capitalism. We can see how the other characters of the movie lose their humanity when they become factory workers or film workers. They are nothing to their country but a source of money. They work all day and they live in terrible conditions. We see a contrast of color and sound in some scenes specifically the ones were the people were being oppressed which give it a darker connotation. But the most effective scenes where not the animation one but when they show small clips of the real world and how bad things really are. A break from the fantasy and a crash into reality.The movie is a critique of the world we live in and how some people are lost to this society. People are stripped of their lives and are forced to become nothing but and income to those in charge and those in charge clearly don't care about them. The fact that the boy's dad is never found shows just how lost people really get in this world sometimes. I found the movie to be extremely effective at getting its message across. I couldn't stop thinking about this movie for a week after I watched it, it will really make you consider and look with a critical eye what is going on in the world now days. We can let other people be stripped of their humanity there must be something we can do.

This movie is a genuine masterpiece, humane and complex. It's a story of wonder and discovery; the plot simply resolves around this idea. The movie offers the viewer a chance to see the world and explore its immensity together with the little protagonist, and it's simply an offer you can't refuse when each scene is so delicate and so full of life, and draws you in so intensely. Searching for his father, the titular boy runs from the countryside to the modern city, seeing and meeting an array of characters, all of which portray different states and facets of life, no matter the fact that they not once dialogue – the movie has virtually no spoken lines, but all emotion is generated by the actions and the (very Brazillian) rhythm of the instruments. You can feel the bright joy of the singers, the exhaustion of the rural workers as they go on with their labor routine, the boy's curiosity, and courage to enter each different environment. Speaking of environment, each is unique, and is as alive as the characters that inhabit them. The boy's home brings a sense of comfort,the cotton plantations are mostly composed of repetitive patterns of trees and carts. The busy city is cramped with ads and cars and machines of all kids. So although being, in general, lighthearted, the tone is quite emotive; after all, it represents the spectrum of human emotion.The animation is scribble-like, resembling crayon drawings done by a child, but the fluidity and kaleidoscope of thus fitting perfectly well its theme.It's the kind of art that I'd recommend anyone to see at least once, for it has much to offer in its pseudo-simplicity. It's a portrait of life, through the eyes of an exploring child.

Sweet, beautiful, wordless animated film, telling the charming, endearing and sometimes sad story of a young boy from the country going in search of his father who has moved to the city to earn money for the family. The film seems an attempt to see through a child's eyes, and it succeeds, leading to images that are surreal, wondrous and odd, and that don't always make literal sense. Imagine how the high tech modern world would seem to a small boy of say 5, wandering in alone from the countryside. The film captures that feelingDone in a simple, colorful, handmade style that's the opposite of most computer animation we see these days, recalling artists like Joan Miro, there's a heartfelt quality that goes with the handcrafted nature of its slightly surreal and beautiful images. Truly universal, there's not a single word of real dialogue, just some occasional gibberish-speak. There's also great Brazilian music that changes personality with the boy's adventures, along with a nice lesson for kids about the loss of the beauty of nature in the industrial world. Quite special.