50
One wonders how receptive young audiences should be to a film that puts its storytelling secondary to its message-making.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
70
Los Angeles Times by Charles Solomon
Boy & the World is a brightly colored, often charming film that juxtaposes simple, hand-drawn animation with kaleidoscopic computer-generated patterns.
75
RogerEbert.com by Christy Lemire
Boy and the World is dazzlingly colorful and alive, often resembling a more elaborate version of the kind of childlike drawings you probably have stuck to your refrigerator door right now.
70
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
Even if the film could be accused of lacking subtlety and overloading on whimsy, it spreads a sobering message in a lucid story that remains visually alive and inventive throughout — its aesthetic keeps constantly shifting yet remains fluid.
80
Beyond its sheer, intense variety and ingenuity, Abreu’s animation remains so appealing throughout because it always feels handmade.
90
The New York Times by Nicolas Rapold
It’s both the best children’s animated film this year since “Inside Out” — you might call it “Outside In” — and, unexpectedly, a more stirring depiction of the deadening modern megalopolis than most heal-the-world documentaries.
83
As with the movie as a whole, the message those scenes deliver is a heady mix of uplifting and devastating.
83
Christian Science Monitor by Peter Rainer
It’s lovely, child’s-eye fantasia.
75
Virtually dialogue-free and animated in a cacophony of playful bright colors and ominous industrial landscapes, Boy & the World plays like a dream segueing into a nightmare.
80
Village Voice by Sherilyn Connelly
Tension between the city and the country has been a fertile topic for as long as there've been cities, and Alê Abreu's phantasmagoric The Boy and the World explores the eternal conflict in a familiar yet wholly original way.