I’ve recently returned from a surreal holiday to France’s sunny and decadent south coast, the Riviera. My travel companions were a movie theater full of kids and the ever-entertaining Moomin Family. The destination was wonderful, and I’d recommend it to anyone with 80 minutes to spare.
 
Moomins on the Riviera is one of those rare hand-animated films, though the the dramaturgy is a bit messy, this French-Finnish co-production is highly enjoyable. I wasn’t bored for one moment.

Visual célébration

Every single scene of this old-school film, completely animated by hand, is a feast for the eye. Tove Jansson’s original comic strip about the Moomins’ luxury vacation to France was published in black and white, so the animators had to create a color palette that would fit the movie’s universe.
 
As director Xavier Picard explained in an interview with gbtimes, they ended up with a far-from-realistic one, where – for example – the water is at times yellow, and at times violet. I can’t recall a single scene where the water was actually blue.
 
"Most important is to characterize the feeling of the characters,” the director told gbtimes, and I agree with him. The movie's universe is dreamy, effective – and just beautiful.
 
The Moomins, and the rest of the characters, are drawn in a style that resembles Jansson’s original drawings much more than the cute and soft manga-like style used in the (also great) 1990 TV series that some of you might remember.

Oh so comique

I am one of those people who have watched the TV series and read a few Moomin novels, but never actually read the comic strips, which were created by Tove and later her brother Lars Jansson. So, after watching Moomins on the Riviera, I headed straight to the library to find Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip – Book One, where this particular story is to be found.
 
Many of the film’s settings, such as the hotel room and streetscapes, are taken directly from the source. In addition, the characters and many of the lines are straight from the comic strip. The story has been changed only slightly to introduce a new audience to Moominvalley; though the beginning of the film can seem a bit off, it does not however mess with any of the main points of the plot.
 
Indeed, at times, I almost felt the movie was too faithful to the original. The screenplay bears the mark of its source being a comic strip, for good or ill.
 
The story was originally published in the British newspaper The Evening News in 1955. Since it was a newspaper strip, every three or four frames there is a punchline. The same goes for the movie; it is filled with lines, references and jokes that will make you chuckle all the way through. This characteristic does disturb the flow of the cinematic storytelling a bit, but who cares when you are well-entertained all the time?

A bit risqué

If you know the Moomins from Jansson’s books or the animated TV series, you will be familiar with the important role that the beautiful and calm, but also mysterious and dangerous, nature of Moominvalley often plays. In the movie that this review is concerned with, however, the Moomins leave their forests and open spaces behind for a crowded, rather snobbish society that is obsessed with nobility, eccentricity and money.
 
On the Riviera the naive Moomin characters are far away from their natural habitat, and each of them reacts differently to the change of environment. Not everyone can resist the temptations of the materialistic luxury lifestyle that meets them on the Riviera, and it’s simple enough to view Moomins on the Riviera as a criticism of the materialistic values that rule most of modern society.
 
Moominpappa gets drunk and wakes up with a painful hangover, while Moomintroll gets a taste of the bitter feeling that is jealousy. These are phenomena that adults will recognize but most children will not, and they are shown in a way that will not make young kids wonder about things they are not ready for.
 
Moomins on the Riviera is a great film for an audience of any age. I enjoyed it a lot: so did my 3-year-old cinema companion, who has been re-enacting scenes from the film ever since we came back from the theater. 

The film is shown in cinemas around the world. You can find more information at the official website: moominsontheriviera.com