The script mistakes editorializing for subtext. All of these hackneyed insights are paraded as if to be profound life lessons. It is as deep and life-changing as sifting through a rack of greeting cards. It wants to be a fable, but it ends up being feeble. The message at the end about home being not a place but a group that loves you leaves a ton of unanswered questions. How will the animals feed the boy? Will the fox get hungry enough to eat the mole? Will the horse start abusing his position of power with the others? What horrible secret is the mole’s cake addiction keeping at bay? This is further proof that vagueness doesn’t always result in existentialism.
I wish I could appreciate The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse on its technical virtues despite the poverty of quality in the source story, but the infection is too far spread. It has a great opening shot, with a screen of white snow with a little boy coming in closer and closer in the frame. But, after that, we only get slab after slab of unremarkable winter woods imagery. It has the same visual impact as Thomas Kinkade’s paintings with the houses left out.
“…mistakes editorializing for subtext.”
The hand-drawn animation may have been more impressive if the illustrations brought to life were more original. Everything seen seems extremely familiar, as the drawings are highly derivative of other children’s books. Mole is basically E.H. Shepard’s piglet with the ears cut off. You could also cover a hundred thousand pancakes with the syrup made from all the sap generated by Isobel Waller-Bridge’s score. The tinkling of a slowly weeping keyboard batters the soundtrack constantly like an angry tide coming in.
The vocal talent is wasted as well. Bryne, to me, will always be the greatest on-screen Lord Byron in Gothic, but even he can’t make the talking horse work. At a half hour, the film feels squirmingly overlong, especially for any poor child set in front of it. This apple has no core. Anyone looking beyond the surface of The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse will find the crud, the crap, the corny, and the counterfeit.
"…wants to be a fable..."
