The Gruffalo (2009)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Good movie but grossly overrated

Fresh and Exciting

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A fun children's animated movie, and certainly not too long. The story seemed familiar in some way, but of the Gruffalo I never heard before. They didn't mean Mark Ruffalo meeting the Grinch, right?The animation style is charming, the characters work pretty good and the story unfolds cleverly, with distinct attention to many details. The ending had escaped me for a while, but I was able to look it up.A great introduction to the many monsters of cinema for children, should they be interested. One nephew couldn't get enough of this. Me neither, really.8 out of 10.

A well made recreation of the book, very well animated, great style, well expressed. But the moral of the story, is that dishonesty is the best approach to survival.Frankly, considering it's aimed at children of a highly susceptible age to such influences, the fact that this is well made horrifies me.The author's intent was to create a children's book without purpose, at least I hope, but the result is something incredibly damaging to our society.If you're going to censor what your children watch, I could name a hundred movies full of hardcore blood and violence that would give them a far better moral education.Hell, Watership Down may have been brutal and had me cowering behind the sofa once a week in my years as a toddler, but at least it had integrity, and a point other than existing.I'll give it a 5. 10 for quality, 1 for purpose/story.

This short film based on the popular children's book was something I was really annoyed to miss when it was broadcast at Christmas, but when it was shown again I wasn't going to miss it again. Basically two Little Squirrels (Sam Lewis and Phoebe Givron-Taylor) are being told the story of a mouse's walk through the woods by Mother Squirrel (Helena Bonham Carter). A Mouse (James Corden) goes for a walk in the forest in order to get to the tree of acorns, and along the way he encounters predators who will want to eat him. He encounters a Fox (Tom Wilkinson), an Owl (John Hurt) and a Snake (Rob Brydon) who all invite him for a meal, the Mouse declines all of them as he knows they want to eat him. After declining he says to each enemy that he is meeting something called the Gruffalo (Robbie Coltrane), which he describes the hideous anatomy of, and he says its favourite food is based on his predator, to which they run away. The Mouse laughs to himself, knowing that there is no such thing as a Gruffalo, however he is shocked to see that the creature he has been inventing actually exists, and he wants to eat him. However the Mouse stops him, claiming that he is the scariest animal in the forest, and the Gruffalo thinking this is a joke agrees to follow him so he can prove it. The Mouse approaches each predator again, and they run away in terror seeing the big monster behind him, the Gruffalo assumes wrongly that they are running from the Mouse. After all this and the Gruffalo believes that he is indeed the scariest animal in the forest, the Mouse threatens to eat him, to which the large creature runs away, and the Mouse walks away nibbling an acorn he finds. The computer animation is really good for this simple and fun story, the younger audience will definitely have fun with the lovable Mouse, the hideous but likable Gruffalo, and the other characters as well, and the older audience will like the well known voices bringing them to life, is an easy to enjoy family fantasy. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Short Animated Film, and it was nominated the BAFTA for Best Short Animation. Very good!

Having narrowly avoided a predator herself, a mother squirrel calms the nerves of her two young children by telling them a story of a plucky young mouse who travels deep into the woods in search of food only to find predators at every turn ready to trick him into becoming their next meal.While the satellite channels have pretty much taken away the "big movie premiere" as an event on BBC at Christmas time, the BBC still have their usual weapons by their sides to ensure that people looking for easy festive distraction know they can come to them. As a result we do get several episodes of Eastenders but it does also mean special films of existing shows (such as Dr Who etc) which sometimes can be quite good, but also animated programmes. The usual big winner that everyone thinks of is of course Wallace & Gromit, but this year there was none of them but there was this charming little film sitting comfortably just before the end of David Tenant on Doctor Who.Based on the very successful children's book (which I've not read), the rhyming dialogue of the mouse's speech appears to have made it as has the look and feel of the film since the animation is very close to what I have seen of the book. In terms of substance it is very simple but effective – you know where it is going but it has an easy delight to it that one cannot help enjoying. I'm not sure if it is from the book or not but I felt that the narrative device of having us be told the mouse's story via another story teller (and being able to see her audience while also be the audience ourselves) really did work to make it a bit more engaging. The cast is fairly packed with famous voices as well (and not just for UK viewers, which is normally how it works). Although I personally am yet to see what everyone likes about him, Corden does a good job as the mouse – despite the feeling that the BBC were putting him in everything (this was his first of three appearances at Christmas). He is quite restrained in his delivery, which suits the mouse and the clever little rhyming style of his speech. Carter's narrator is balanced and responsible, with Brydon, Hurt and Wilkinson doing good work in small bits as the predators. Coltrane is the only one that really makes an impression though, since his voice is quite distinctive and he plays up the gruff aspect of it. In terms of the stars, they are all good without being so good that it explains their involvement, but I suppose it helps the film and also represented an easy time commitment from them.What really made it for me though was the animation. The film looks great but it does it in a way that never feels showy or like it is being done for the sake of it. In terms of bringing it to the screen it somehow manages to be impressive and detailed but yet also keep the rounded colourful nature that one would expect with a children's animated book. To me, the animation did more than the star names in terms of creating the characters and while the casting is a coup that catches the eye, the animators deserve a lot of credit as well.Overall, a charming little delight – nothing to blow you away or having you rolling like Wallace & Gromit perhaps, but a simple enjoyable story told in a very effective and enjoyable way.