Flasz On Film

Synopsis: When spirited eight-year-old Heidi rescues a lynx cub from a greedy businessman threatening their Alpine home, she uncovers her grandfather’s hidden past and learns that true belonging means protecting both family and the wild places they call home.  

On its face, Heidi: Rescue of the Lynx—a European co-production directed by Tobias Schwarz—cannot compete with mainstream animated movies coming out Dreamworks, The House of Mouse or The Fortress of the Hopping Lamp. It is unfortunately a sad fact of life that, in contrast to live-action films where low budgets can be disguised much easier and compensated for in different ways, in the world of animation money speaks volumes. This is particularly true when it comes to 3D computer-generated animation where the amount of money translates directly into more compute, better rendering, more realistic physics algorithms and thus, greater viewer immersion. Everything looks better in an animated movie that costs 200 million dollars than it does in one that cost a fraction of this amount and where the filmmakers could not afford the tech used in movies like Elio or Elemental.  

And that’s what Heidi looks like: a Dreamworks movie made on a budget. It doesn’t look formidable by any stretch of the imagination, therefore it’s downright impossible to recommend it to anyone who would like to take their family for a day out at the movies; not when you can choose to see The Bad Guys 2 or Elio, which still hangs on for dear life at the summer box office. The movie just looks like it’s a longform relative of Thomas and Friends rather than anything else and many young viewers who have enjoyed A Minecraft Movie this year already and raved to the rafters about The Super Mario Bros. Movie in the past will simply find this production unengaging, trite and underwhelming in many respects.  

However, this does not mean that this little animated flick has no place in the landscape of current releases. While older kids trained on Disney and Pixar fare will likely scoff at the idea of being dragged into the cinema to watch this, it might just be the perfect gateway drug for those kids who have outgrown Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol and might be ready for a longer film.  Unfortunately, this is where the release landscape gets sparse—kids who’ve outgrown Bing but find The Secret Life of Pets 2 overwhelming don’t have many cinematic options. Speaking from the position of experience, I remember vividly how my own personal daughter found certain sections of even the most accessible Disney productions like Frozen or Moana to be quite a bit overwhelming and for those kids Heidi will be a perfect recommendation.  

The movie is not long enough to infringe on the attention span of a typical five-year-old with its seventy-five-minute running time, the story is easy to follow, the characters are colorful and the messaging is simple enough that they might get a lot out of the experience with only minimal need for their parents or guardians to have to explain anything to them. And since they are unlikely to have seen any big budget productions with their impeccable animation, unmatched physics and editing that enables incredible viewer immersion, they won’t mind the fact that Heidi looks like a Pixar movie ordered from Temu.  

Therefore, please consider that the star rating you see above this text is only relevant if you are not a mum of a five-year-old rugrat. It’s not a movie for you if you have literally seen anything that Disney, Pixar or Dreamworks have ever produced. It’s also not a good choice if you are comfortable with plopping down on the sofa with your kids to engage in the umpteenth rewatch of Encanto. But if you have a little one who is big into Bluey and Peppa Pig and you’d like to introduce them to something that will be a bit more challenging but not too overwhelming, Heidi: Rescue of the Lynx will be a good choice.  

Your four-year-old won’t mind that the action sequences look like they were filmed in slow motion or that the animated characters frequently look as though they were hovering over the ground. They will empathize with Heidi and her plight and respond well to the cute lynx cub. They are also unlikely to develop nightmares having seen the movie’s central villain with his evil sideburns and a top hat. It’ll be a five-star experience. But a ten-year-old is going to bore themselves to death. Thus, please see Heidi: Rescue of the Lynx as a gateway experience and a transition experience that is likely to prime your little rascals for mainstream kids’ movies that they have to acclimate themselves to first.