Review: Adorable adventures await in Ellie the Elephant: The Big Journey

It's that time of year when various countries announce what movies they're submitting for the forthcoming Oscars. Pretty much every day now, we have a new submission, or at least a shortlist. It's a fun time for those of us who are into the whole awards circus (I am, though much less these days than when I was younger).

Recently, the Netherlands announced the movies that have been submitted to compete on the behalf of the Dutch for the Oscars, and one caught my eye: Ellie the Elephant: The Big Journey. I got in touch with the film's director, Ellen Langendam, who kindly sent me a screener link.

While I don't imagine the adorable Ellie will end up on the Oscars stage, what a wonderful little movie this was. I don't have kids, and don't plan to, but if I did, you better believe this movie would be on regular rotation in my house. It's an adorable hour-long feature that is aimed at the preschool set, complete with a colorful cast of animal characters, a warm-voiced narrator providing commentary, catchy songs, and invitations for young viewers to participate. I love that my penchant for animation sometimes leads me to movies like this. It's like taking a step into another, simpler world, where I get to turn my brain off and just bop along the kid-friendly wavelength of something that wasn't made for me.

Ellie the Elephant: The Big Journey is a feature-length spin-off of a Dutch TV show featuring the eponymous elephant and her huge community of animal friends. Even without knowing that ahead of time, I could surmise the film's origin: it feels very much like a bunch of mini episodes of a TV show strung together, much like one of the Peppa Pig theatrical programs. Every six or seven minutes or so, we're off to a new story starring Ellie and a few friends. Rinse, wash, repeat.

The way each story is structured is pretty interesting, and feels like it's very much keyed into the movie's demographic. We watch as Ellie and her friends go through a story. In one, they're tending a garden that gets interrupted by Mole, whose poor eyesight leads to him causing destruction. In another, an alien takes Ellie to the moon for a dance party. In another, a bunch of the animals are floating in the pond, where Hedgehog joins in and promptly pops all their inflatables. After the story wraps up, there's a song that basically goes through the story beats again, but this time with a poppin' beat underneath. Finally, we return to the movie's frame -- Ellie and friends in a hot air balloon -- where the audience is invited to pantomime along with the characters, pretending to fly, dig, swim, all kinds of things. This repetition, hitting on the same story in three different ways, surely helps the kids watching retain the information, and maybe helps them start to form the framework to tell stories themselves.

Each of the scenarios is very cute, and a lot of the pleasure for me came from seeing which new characters would pop up. In one, there's Lion and Tiger, who talk a big game but are quite nervous when asked to figure out the source of Crocodile's toothache. In another, a group of friends accompany Polar Bear on his way back to the North Pole. And I've already mentioned the adorable Hedgehog, who wants to swim with his friends. All of the characters are adorable, and the animation has a bright, simple, and clean style to it that makes it fun to watch. It's very gentle, soothing -- no flashing lights or fast movements.

Older viewers probably won't find much here, but if you've got kids in your life who need a break from more hyperkinetic fare, Ellie the Elephant: The Big Journey is just the ticket.