Saturday, July 6, 2013

La planète sauvage (The Fantastic Planet) 1973

Today's animated feature is The Fantastic Planet.  What a super trippy ride this was.  The animation style was somewhat like Monty Python and the weird alien-like creatures were straight out of The Yellow Submarine.

There are giant blue aliens called "traags" and there are humans like us called "oms".  Sometimes these oms are kept as pets, but most are wild.  The wild ones are like pests to the traags.  The story focuses on one pet om who has a kind young owner named Tiwa who keeps him near her during her school lessons.  She's homeschooled and gets her lessons from a headset.

Since one week on this planet equals one year on Earth, the humans grow quickly. Tiwa's pet, who she names Terr, learns everything he can from the headset and eventually runs off to join the wild oms.  Terr teaches the other oms to read, and they work together to escape the traags who are trying to exterminate them.  They build a rocketship and wind up on the Fantastic Planet, where they find weird headless statues of naked people.  These are actually important to the plot, and the oms destroy them with a laser beam.

Finally, the giant traags take the little oms seriously.  They stop exterminating them like bugs and they learn to live together. Why?  Because one person learns how to read and spreads knowledge throughout the om community.  The lesson: Knowledge is power. Or, as G.I. Joe says, "Knowing is half the battle." I will give this film a 7/10.

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