'My Life as a Zucchini': You're not too old for this
Stop-motion-animated, only about 60 minutes long and titled like an off-brand “Veggie Tales,” “My Life as a Zucchini” is actually anything but light.
Sheesh, consider just these three moments, beautiful and heartbreaking and all within the first 10 minutes or so of this Oscar-nominated effort, opening Friday at Music Box both in its original French and dubbed into English with voice work from Nick Offerman, Will Forte, Ellen Page and Amy Sedaris:
-- A shy nine-year-old (voiced by Erick Abate in the English version), who prefers to be called Zucchini because that’s his mother’s name for him, plays alone in his room while his alcoholic mom drinks downstairs. Out the window he flies a kite with a hand-drawn superhero on it; that’s meant to be the dad who left them, and after pulling the kite back inside he hugs it.
-- After his mother dies when Zucchini accidentally causes her to fall down the stairs and a cop (Offerman at maximum quiet kindness) drives him to an orphanage, the officer allows Zucchini to fly the kite out the window of the police car. An unusual, gorgeous image.
-- At the orphanage, the items by which he has to remember his parents are just a box with the kite in it for his dad, and a beer can for his mom. He holds both very dear to him.
Not that it’s uncommon for family friendly material to approach difficult feelings. But “Zucchini,” which I find more courageous and narratively sound than “Zootopia,” which took home the Oscar, or “Inside Out,” which won last year, dares to be honest and direct about sadness. The movie doesn’t work to distract from that; it’s cut from the opposite cloth of most hyperactive kid-focused stuff, and it doesn’t pander. If you or your kid/niece/brother is bored, that’s your problem, not director Claude Barras’.
At the orphanage, Zucchini quickly finds himself the target of a bully who calls him “Potato Head,” but the script, adapted by Celine Sciamma (writer-director of the fantastic “Girlhood”) from a novel by Gilles Paris, understands the uncertainty and pain that sometimes drives behavior at any age. The blue-haired, red-nosed Zucchini is also drawn to Camille (Ness Krell), who arrives a little later and, like the rest of the group, has endured incredible anguish about their parents and doesn’t know where love will come from next. The scene of Zucchini and Camille lying in the snow, not cutesy at all and just talking about what makes them sad, is startling in its purity.
“Zucchini” doesn’t have the vocal performances or texture of my favorite adult-friendly animated effort of the century, the even more devastating “Mary and Max.” Camille’s aunt (Sedaris) makes for a cliché villain, and if I never see a movie in which a secret recording device plays a crucial role it will be too soon. A bit more story to get beyond an hour – there’s short, and there’s really short – wouldn’t hurt.
But this is a surprising, generous portrait of loneliness and connection among strong kids who are fighting tough odds. It’s a bit like an animated “Short Term 12,” focused on the residents instead of the staff. But it’s also its own lovely little thing.
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