The Amazing Maurice

I was positively shocked from watching this. It feels that this is what Disney has forgotten how to be. It's an animation. It's a stellar animation. It's an animation with talking animals. It's a comedy. It's satirical. And it's just... so, sooooo attentive to detail. Tons of carefully crafted mimicry and gestures, faces, expressions, poses. I can't quite remember the last time I saw anything like it.

Sure, there is no wow effect. It might not look great on the big screen, where you are supposed to see clear blobs of image, while counting every rendered piece of air, and with no pause or rewind. In terms of cost - this is obviously no big production(though the animation is spectacularly clean). But that's what the big productions lack nowadays - soul. Making a single meme face is enough. Meanwhile this little gem is just filled with emotion in every scene.

On top of that - I have to give props to the voice cast. Whether it's the script, the audio engineer or the relatively stellar cast - it's a pleasure to hear virtually any character in this film. I can't say that there's any remarkable music, given the budget, but it's enough to serve the purpose.

Finally, and this is important - this film is clean. There is no agenda. It's an honest family-friendly picture. Funny, with careful moral of the story woven in, just enough for the kids to figure out, but without being preachy or propagandistic.

Maybe the 9\10 rating is a bit too much, given that this is something to reserve only for historical pictures, but this is a small, European production. When even the multi-hundred-million dollar Hollywood flops often can't convince you - how else to show appreciation for the underdog?