Kensuke’s King­dom review – a heart­felt adaptation

A young boy, Michael, and his dog are forced to grap­ple with the real­i­ties of iso­la­tion after he’s thrown from his fam­i­ly ship and strand­ed on a desert island. Com­pelled to come to terms with his har­row­ing sit­u­a­tion, Michael is guid­ed by the wise Ken­suke, the island’s only human inhabitant.

Although sep­a­rat­ed by lan­guage Michael is taught by Ken­suke the ways of the island and how to over­come hard­ship through a con­nec­tion with nature. Neil Boyle’s debut ani­mat­ed fea­ture, Kensuke’s King­dom, relies more on mood and tex­ture than it does dia­logue to explore the char­ac­ters’ intrigu­ing back­sto­ries. Boyle con­veys source author Michael Morpurgo’s strong envi­ron­men­tal­ist ethos, cri­tiquing anthro­pocen­tric ide­olo­gies and explor­ing the val­ue of all ani­mal life.

For the most part, the film repli­cates a real­is­tic visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of real­i­ty, hold­ing back from using ani­ma­tion as a com­pelling means of bring­ing the pages of Morpurgo’s clas­sic to life. There are some har­row­ing exper­i­men­tal inter­ludes which depict the Nagasa­ki bomb­ing, com­mu­ni­cat­ing the tragedy of the event whilst remain­ing digestible for child audiences.

Remain­ing loy­al to the source mate­r­i­al, Boyle’s Kensuke’s King­dom greets fans of the nov­el with a safe cin­e­mat­ic coun­ter­part, using an ani­mat­ed for­mat to re-explore Morpurgo’s envi­ron­men­tal lit­er­a­ture, remain­ing with­in the bound­aries of the orig­i­nal nar­ra­tive, arriv­ing at set expec­ta­tions and noth­ing more.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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