This is a very good movie, and I really liked it. So rating it just 8 stars is, as far as I'm concerned, plain shame. But there are two very annoying faults standing between this movie and the perfect mark.
I mean, it is beautifully animated and acted. The two leads are simply wonderful. Namely Emily Carey as Anne Frank really feels like the girl who survived two years in a hidden apartment, stuck with her own family, another family and a crude dentist. And Ruby Stokes is perfect as the temperamental imaginary friend created by Anne Frank as a literary ploy in order not to speak with herself in her now famous diary. In fact I also loved the idea of the movie using this imaginary friend as a bridge between present day Europe and the days when the actual diary was written and it worked superbly almost all the way through.
And then we reach the ending and the perfect movie is turning all of a sudden from deep and thought provoking into simplistic attempt to solve the entire international refugees problem with a wave of a hand and a few brush strokes. And it also commits the sin of turning too preachy, as if it doesn't trust the viewers to get its point without having it spelled out in plain words. The movie didn't need this bluntness it was working so well without it.
I mean, it is beautifully animated and acted. The two leads are simply wonderful. Namely Emily Carey as Anne Frank really feels like the girl who survived two years in a hidden apartment, stuck with her own family, another family and a crude dentist. And Ruby Stokes is perfect as the temperamental imaginary friend created by Anne Frank as a literary ploy in order not to speak with herself in her now famous diary. In fact I also loved the idea of the movie using this imaginary friend as a bridge between present day Europe and the days when the actual diary was written and it worked superbly almost all the way through.
And then we reach the ending and the perfect movie is turning all of a sudden from deep and thought provoking into simplistic attempt to solve the entire international refugees problem with a wave of a hand and a few brush strokes. And it also commits the sin of turning too preachy, as if it doesn't trust the viewers to get its point without having it spelled out in plain words. The movie didn't need this bluntness it was working so well without it.