Critics reviews

April, the daughter and granddaughter of scientists seeking a serum for everlasting life, makes for a winsome heroine, and the movie--equal parts Jules Verne, The Adventures of Tintin, and Inspector Gadget--should appeal to precocious children, especially little girls interested in the sciences. Adults may find it as derivative and simplistic as the steampunk aesthetic to which it's indebted, but for a gateway to more resonant cinema and literature, you could do worse.

Who says they don't make mind-bending French science-fiction animated movies like they used to? Well, very few people, if any, I reckon. But the thought — or something similar to it — crossed my mind while watching "April and the Extraordinary World," a beautiful, inventive and uncannily satisfying new example of animated sci-fi from, yes, France.

The ecological changes wrought on the world's ecosystems by the pollution unleashed by the Industrial Revolution led to our current epoch of massive geological and climate change. By proposing how much worse the damage could have been without the advent of modern technology, the film provocatively has audiences see the world's current ecological concerns in a different and unexpected light.

The work of the great comic book artist Jacques Tardi is cleverly and beautifully carried to the big screen in April and the Extraordinary World... Agreeably old-school in its animation approach, the movie bathes us in a sepia-toned epoch stretching from the late 19th century until the 1940's – a period when France was still a leader in terms of innovation, and where visitors from across the globe could marvel at steel-and-glass constructions like the Grand Palais (a key location in the film).