Film Review — Kensuke’s Kingdom
Michael Morpurgo’s 1999 novel gets a staggeringly beautiful animated feature treatment
The first thing to note about this feature adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s Kensuke’s Kingdom is the staggeringly beautiful animation. Rendered in striking hand-drawn 2D, it’s a labour of love for directors Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry. It is also a rare delight to see a non-digital animated feature on the big screen.
The plot imagines a fictionalised childhood from the author, with twelve-year-old Michael (voiced by Aaron MacGregor) sailing around the world with his family after his parents are made redundant. Michael has secretly snuck his pet dog, Stella Artois, aboard their boat. I mean Stella, sorry. She’s called Stella Artois in the novel, but promoting booze in a children’s film is a no-no, apparently. So just Stella.
After falling overboard in a storm, Michael and Stella find themselves trapped on a remote island. Here, they meet Kensuke (a lovely vocal performance from Ken Watanabe). He’s a sailor from the Japanese Navy in World War II who has been trapped on the island for decades (one presumes the story takes place in 1999, when the original novel was published). At first, Kensuke is disgruntled by the new arrivals, offering them some grudging help but drawing lines in the sand to insist…
