It was great until...(Spoilers)

It was kind of like that Lorax movie with Danny DeVito.

I was coming here to post the exact same thing. It was a terrific film until the little girl flies away in the plane. At that point, everything fell apart.

The third act is an allegory for the psychedelic experience, btw.

Which is such a shame too because the animation for this movie was gorgeous. Like I get it was from the little girl's perspective, but I personally felt the main message behind the movie was lost because of that third act.

I 100% agree. I loved the first half, but the second half lost me completely.

The worst part was that I felt like it was just such a waste. The second half was bashing us over the head (clumsily) with all the themes we'd already gotten from the (incredibly unlikable) Mom character.

I would have liked the movie so much more if it had simply spent more time on the Little Prince story, had lightened up the Mom a bit, and had then used the aviator's illness as the natural final chapter and place for the little girl to finally confront her Mom about her incredibly unrealistic expectations. Then the very end could still have ended in much the same way.

As it was, I was disappointed. I thought the first half was lovely, and the animation was gorgeous, but the second half kind of ruined it for me.

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I keep thinking I'm a grownup, but I'm not.

Couldn't agree with you more. Two problems: the themes of the book are hammered home, and we are no longer left to imagine what becomes of the Little Prince, which is crucial.

It's such a shame, because I think the idea of framing the story as they did, and tying the death of The Little Prince to the inevitable death of the Aviator, was brilliant.

How about this for an ending: as in the movie, she comes home to find the Aviator about to be taken away from his home in an ambulance. She wordlessly squeezes his hand, they look at one another. He gives her a look she can't quite make sense of, then closes his eyes. The EMT's can't detect a pulse. They try in vain to revive him.

For two days she is inconsolable with grief, and incapacitated by it. Her mother is worried sick, because school begins in three days.

The day before school is to start, she forces herself to get out of bed. She looks at the stuff of the Aviator's that she has, and she realizes that that she has not read the end of the story. In fact the Aviator knew this when he said farewell to her (one of the things she has, perhaps, was something he gave her and is an overt clue that there's more to the story). He had saved the last pages for her to read after his inevitable final journey.

She goes to his house and finds the final pages, where the snake bites the Little Prince, and only then learns that you can look at the stars and hear the Little Prince's laughter, because he is back on his asteroid, because death is only leaving behind a shell.

She goes into the backyard. The airplane is gone. She climbs up to his telescope and looks out. She sees his plane flying into the stars.

(Of course, the plane may have been removed in the two intervening days, and she may have imagined it flying into the stars. It's important to leave both a real and fantastic reading.)

The coda, where she looks at the stars with her Mom, can remain. That was sweet.

Prepare your minds for a new scale of physical, scientific values, gentlemen.

I like that the girl tames the story for her and takes it on in her horizon (all work machine planet). I am not sure if it was even necessary that she met the little prince in that part. I feel it would have been better if this part was also made in stop motion.