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I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good concept, poorly executed.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I'm a very big fan of the surreal genre in animation. So when I first heard how mixed the reception for this film was, worldwide, after watching its mesmerizing trailer, I first came to the conclusion that film critics were unfairly judging it, all because it wasn't anything like you would see from Studio Ghibli. I've seen too many surreal animated films unfairly judged this way, all because they just wanted to do their own thing. But to my surprise after watching this film once, I was shocked how dead wrong I was. This is made worse if you have ever watched my neighbor Totoro. Not to knock Mia and the Migoo down or anything like that, it's just that both films carry very similar ideas, but Totoro executed them far better, gaining the movie large amounts of critical reception. Mia and the Migoo had the potential to be one of, if not the greatest animated environmental film of all time, but failed due to its mediocre pacing and its general wrong sense of direction and focus. Story and Pacing- The idea of the story itself isn't bad. On paper it's actually pretty good. But there are problems. For a film that is 1 hour 30 minutes, it has WAY too much going on in the plot. The film barely wants to put focus on the scenes that are about the story, and instead focuses too much on the comedy aspect. Because of all that the movie's pacing is really broken. When a scene does focus on the story it never feels warranted. By themselves these scenes are good, but when in context to the story it just doesn't work that well. With all of this accounted for, it becomes really hard to understand the movie's environmental and core themes. Story 4-3/10, Pacing 3/10. Characters and Voice acting- The characters in the movie aren't too well defined. Mia is our main protagonist yet the film barely focuses on her. I barely cared about her, even when she was in danger. Same goes for virtually every other main character. Each of them barely has their own personality. What I am about to say isn't an opinion by the way, this is a legit fact. They put more attention on side characters we will never see again than on the main characters. I get the point that they were trying to give those people a lasting impression, but they tried way too hard. I did like how they handled the main antagonist at first. The film makers really humanized him at the beginning, and never made him pure evil. He was just a regular man, doing what a real business man would do. He made serious sacrifices. But thanks to the film's pacing and story structure, even he became a slave to the film's mediocre directing. By the end I had really mixed feelings towards his characterization. He's a good guy by the end, but the moments he acted a bit crazy seemed pretty justified by how the Migoo acted. The character Migoo is a hard one to understand. I personally hated him, or them? His or their actions feel completely randomized and never seem to make sense at all. Voice acting in the movie isn't bad in the slightest, but it's nothing special either. I've only been able to hear the English dub, so I can't give my opinion on the original French. Characters 4-3/10, Voice acting 6/10. #Animation and Sound track- The animation is no doubt the best part of this film. It uses an art style only unique to this film. The colorfully painted characters, animals and backgrounds are pretty nice. And while the frame rate isn't too solid, I would say the sacrifice was worth it, but only for the most part. The animation isn't totally perfect, or flawless. Since the environments are always saturated in bright colors, a sense on contrast isn't always there. Especially in places where there should be some. The film barely utilizes the animation which is a real shame, considering that over 2 years of work went into it alone. This is all because the animation is detrimented by the characters, the story, and the overall pacing. The cinematography isn't that great either. The sound track it's sort of okay. To be honest I barely noticed that the film had a sound track. Only one song stuck out, and it was at the end of the film. The use of real world sounds is pretty well implemented. Animation 7.8/10, and Sound track 6/10. #Re-watch ability 5-3/10. You're likely not going to come back to this film anytime soon. Sorry if I sound like a jerk, but it's hard not to be so blunt. I've watched the movie twice now, and unfortunately my feelings have remained the same. You're better off watching my neighbor Totoro if you want to see some of these ideas pushed to maximum potential. Watching this film was an experience that I won't forget any day, or any time soon into the future. I think Mia and the Migoo should be view as a case study of how not to make a surreal animated film. If you look up the movie's history you'll be surprised to find out that a lot of love and passion went into the product. The director/ creator sounds like a really creative and nice guy. He knew his project was limited in many areas, but he still made the film anyway. One hand he has my respect for sticking with his ideas in the end. On the other hand though I wish he would have realized that he didn't have the budget or time to bring out its full potential. I am happy to say that Jacques-Remy Girerd has gotten better over the years as a director. I can see why some people would say this is a good film, but that's more about personal preference. FINAL SCORE 5.1-4.6/10

Reviewed by KIDS FIRST! Film Critic, Morgan Bertsch, age 7. Video review here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krL5oxIy9hEThis movie is a hand drawn cartoon from France. The voice overs were done twice, once in French and then in English. It is amazing that all the images were hand drawn. In order to really understand this movie and all it took to get this movie to the big screen you must watch the bonus features including the making of Mia and the Migoos. I am only seven which means it took them almost as long to make this movie as I have been alive. WOW! Six years of drawing, music, sound, voice overs and it is finally done. The art is amazing. The shadowing and colors are bright and happy and bring the characters to life. I could not imagine drawing ever frame of this movie by hand. Keeping this in mind while you watch it and you will see just how special this movie is. In a time of computers it is great to see people still using pencil, paper, ink and paint to create such a piece of art. The music is creepy and was created with a full orchestra and parts of the story are scary. So the music matches well. Perfect sound effects add to the believability and the attention to details they put into every picture is incredible. Mia has a dream that her Father is missing. When she wakes up she decides to go up to the mountains and see if she can find her lost father. He is trapped underground. Mia is fearless and has a spirit for adventure. She has a big heart but learns not to judge people by their looks alone. Along the way we meet many funny, strange and cute people and creatures. My favorite part was when Mia meets the Migoos.When she gets to the forest, she meets the scary Migoos who she discovers are not scary at all but funny and friendly. You can see through parts of them. They are able to get small and grow larger. There are many language differences so they have funny moments where they are trying to relate to Mia. It is the Migoos job to protect the tree of life. There are evil people out to destroy it. Does Mia find her father? Who finds out they have a heart after all? The ages are 6 and up I give it 4 twinkling stars. Be forewarned there is some bad language.

Mia, a little girl living in a dying village decides to go and see her father Pedro, working miles away on a construction site. This site has seen a number of weird sabotage events. Pedro, trying to investigate, disappears in a tunnel collapse. Mia will have to brave many obstacles to reach her destination. This beautiful animation film will stay in my mind for a long time. It is an ode to nature and the responsibility of our generation and our children's. The starting scene with the Tree is breathtaking at the cinema. You quickly forget the crudeness of the drawings and get sucked into the story through the warm voices and music. In my opinion, children from 3 years old can see it but adults should be the ones to really listen to the messages. If you've seen the French film 'Les Ch'tis' you will recognise in the character Le Migou, the French accent from Northern France. Enjoy!

I saw this film at the world premiere at the Festival d'Annecy 2008, in Annecy, France. The designs were charmingly old school and the movie seemed cute.Unfortunately, it's really badly written. The story, although it's for kids and revolves around a very classical them (mean greedy corporate suit destroys nature for money but little innocent girl meets magical beings and fights with only her innocence), is treated way too naively.Although the characters have clear goals, the story is really badly structured and the overall pace of the film is boring. The fact that the dialogue are extremely poor only makes it worse. They're awkward, sound awfully unnatural, are way too long and inefficient for conveying the needed information to the audience.So bad story, badly structured, served by bad dialogues. But the actors suck quite a bit too. I saw the movie in its original french version (my mother tongue), and the actors just sound awful and lack believability and every single one of their lines (the fact that they've been given amateur lines in the first place must not help).All of the above plus a million other details make a movie that just simply DOESN'T work. Every person I spoke to after the screening (many of them animation professionals) said they just couldn't get to care about the characters and that none of the emotion worked in the film. Nobody felt sad when something sad happened, nobody felt any kind of tension during the scenes where there was supposed to be some, the climax didn't work at all, etc.I'm here judging the film on its "film" qualities (writting, directing, acting), not on the technical side of things. But as a side note: the animation sucked balls, too. A few characters are cute, but the Migou (the strange creature) just look awkward and have an annoying personality.What was very promising seems just like the poor man's My Neighbour Totoro.It still bends my mind that it takes so long (6 years) to mount and produce such a film. The animation industry seems like a crazy place that needs to refine its financing channels...