80
The sweet-natured Kirikou and the Sorceress, is a French animated movie drawing on a West African tale that has an authenticity The Lion King lacks.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
91
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
Many times more African than "Tarzan" and "The Lion King" combined, Kirikou and the Sorceress is one of the best movies so far in this very young year.
60
The New York Times by Elvis Mitchell
It's more a piece to admire than to be involved by, yet it's easy to imagine children hypnotized by a hero tinier than they are when "Kirikou" is continually loaded into the VCR.
70
Chicago Reader by Lisa Alspector
The plots of animated features are often excuses for visual showboating, but here the lilting story line, based on west African folktales, complements the alternately sumptuous and austere images.
75
Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan
Coupled with the fact that the plant and animal life (hoopoes, zorilles and ground squirrels, among other beasties) really look African, and that the film's original score is by the great contemporary Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour, Kirikou and the Sorceress's surprising honesty about the banality of evil makes the movie -- even with all its magic -- feel truly authentic.
80
A welcome antidote to anodyne Hollywood cartooning.
75
San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Stack
Kirikou and the Sorceress is definitely a sunny spot in the mire of frenetic, violent and often dopey cartoon films produced by Hollywood. It's also far more imaginative that most.
80
The Dissolve by Tasha Robinson
Kirikou is a wonder because it’s such a familiar kind of story, told in such an unusual way.
63
San Francisco Examiner by Wesley Morris
Set in a vivid two-dimensional African village, the animated fable is jerky, odd but redolent somehow of Saturday morning and the night's sleep before.