Stop-motion-animated My Life As a Zucchini stands tall

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      Featuring the voices of Nick Offerman and Erick Abbate. Rating unavailable

      Based on a young-adult novel that had already been turned into a French TV movie, the stop-motion-animated My Life as a Zucchini (originally called Autobiography of a Courgette) takes for granted that children can and do handle thoughts about loneliness, abuse, death, and sex earlier than you might expect if you live in a Disney universe.

      Just over an hour long, the Oscar-nominated ’toon—a France-Switzerland coproduction—is set in an environment that manages to be both fanciful and hyperreal. For his feature debut, Swiss writer-director Claude Barras utilizes huge figures with giant papier-mâché heads (kind of a Coraline-meets-Frank deal) to convey the unique characters who find themselves corralled into an austere-looking orphanage that turns out to be a pretty positive place for everyone involved.

      With a screenplay primarily by France’s Céline Sciamma, who wrote and directed such tough-minded gender studies as Girlhood and Tomboy, the colour-rich effort is available in both French-language and dubbed versions. In the Anglo take, newcomer Erick Abbate provides the voice of the pointedly named Icarus, who prefers to be called Zucchini, the belittling moniker bestowed on him by his beer-swilling mother, who exits the story early. (His long-gone dad is represented by the flat drawing on a high-flying kite.)

      The initially near-mute boy is taken to the countryside home by a friendly policeman (Nick Offerman), with whom he forms an instant bond. Meanwhile, our courgette must fight for dominance with spiky, redheaded Simon (Romy Beckman), the miniband’s natural leader. But he has no trouble adjusting to the sudden arrival of Camille (Ness Krell), a troubled girl who has just lost both parents.

      The group coalesces remarkably well under the loose guidance of two artsy teachers (Will Forte and Ellen Page), but there is trouble in the form of Camille’s hideous aunt (Amy Sedaris), the gentle tale’s only real villain. Some of the happenings are unlikely in any culture, but as seen from a child’s eye, this Zucchini stands tall.

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