A Sublime Trip to a Fine New World

Starring: (the voice talents of) Barry Bostwick, Jennifer Drake, Eric Baugin, Jean Topart, Jean Valmont, Sylvie Lenoir, Michele Chahan, Yves Barsacq

DML Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ - great

"After a while, I lost my intimacy with Tiwa. As she grew up, she gave up her playthings. Deprived of lessons, I decided to run away." – Terr (narrating)

Why watch this? This thought-provoking animated film has lessons for us all.

Plot Summary: Set on the distant planet Ygam, the story explores the relationship between the highly intelligent, giant blue Draags and the smaller, human-like Oms who are treated as both pets and pests. The narrative follows an Om named Terr as he gains access to Draag knowledge and leads his people in a struggle for survival and coexistence. This struggle eventually culminates in the Oms finding a way to establish a new home on Ygam's moon, the Fantastic Planet itself.

Dad's Preview: As a kid, many issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine would contains pictures from this sci-fi classic. Even then, I was intriqued. This French film is both incredibly creative and sympathetically humanistic. The planet's dominate beings are the blue, highly-advanced Draags. They appear aloof and cold. We, of course, relate more to the mice-sized Oms, who are basically humans, trapped on a brutal world, at the mercy of the Draags and all the land's various beasts. The Oms are pests to the Draags, that is, until a single boy, Terr, escapes and becomes the hero we root for. Fantastic Planet is like immersing your mind into a Picasso nightmare - one that, for a person searching to learn, teaches empathy, at the least, and coexistence as a larger state to achieve. 

Les Films Armorial, Service de le recherche ORTF, Studio Jiri Trnka;
Argos Films